"Beulah, put up your book and make the tea, will you?"

She started up, and, seating herself before the urn, said joyfully: "Good-evening! I did not know you had come home. You look cold,
sir."

"Yes, it is deucedly cold; and, to mend the matter, Mazeppa must
needs slip on the ice in the gutter and lame himself. Knew, too, I
should want him again to-night." He drew a chair to the table and
received his tea from her hand, for it was one of his whims to
dismiss Mrs. Watson and the servants at this meal, and have only
Beulah present.

"Who is so ill as to require a second visit to-night?"

She very rarely asked anything relative to his professional
engagements, but saw that he was more than usually interested.

"Why, that quiet little Quaker friend of yours, Clara Sanders, will
probably lose her grandfather this time. He had a second paralytic
stroke to-day, and I doubt whether he survives till morning."

"Are any of Clara's friends with her?" asked Beulah quickly.

"Some two or three of the neighbors. What now?" he continued as she
rose from the table.

"I am going to get ready and go with you when you return."

"Nonsense! The weather is too disagreeable; and, besides, you can do
no good; the old man is unconscious. Don't think of it."