Miss Muller watched him to the door, and then crossed the hall to her own room, locking the door behind her.  The square table was piled with medical books.  She sat down and dropped her head on her arms.  Over went a bound volume of the Lancet and a folio on diseases of the kidneys to the floor.  She looked down at them.  “And I was willing to give him up for that—­that trash!” sobbing and rubbing her arms like a beaten child.  But she had so strong a habit of talking that even in this pain the words would come:  “I loved him so.  He would have married me!  And I must be kept from him by a law of society!  It is—­it is,” rising and wrenching her hands together, “a damnable law!”

For Miss Muller had taught herself to think and talk like a man.

REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

BOWERY ENGLAND.

A party of four Americans in London—­Mr. Hill Bunker of Boston, Mrs. Bunker, his wife, Miss Amy Abell of New York, and myself—­we find ourselves growing weary of that noisy town.  We talk of a trip to the country.  It is the merry month of May.

“Just the time for ’bowery England, as Bulwer phrases it,” says Amy.  “Let us go to Romsey and see the Boyces.”

Carried unanimously.  We take the train from the Waterloo Station two hours later.  When we get down at Romsey, “Fly, sir?” asks the attentive porter—­carries our luggage, calls the fly and touches his hat thankfully for three-pence.  The Romsey fly is a lumbering, two-seated carriage, rather more pretentious than a London cab, but far behind the glossy gorgeousness of a New York hackney-coach.

A short drive brings us to the White Horse Inn, under whose covered arch we roll, and are met at the door by a maid.  She conducts us to a stuffy coffee-room up a flight of crumbling old stairs, and meekly desires to know our will.

“Send the landlord, please.”

The landlord comes, bowing low, and we make inquiries concerning the distance to Paultons, the estate where the Boyces have been spending the summer, and where we venture to hope they still are.  He says it is a matter of four miles, and that we can have a fly over for six shillings.  We order the fly to be got ready at once, and inquire if we can have dinner now, it being late in the afternoon.

“Yes, sir,” he replies.  “Would you like some chicken and sparrowgrass?”

“How long will they be in cooking?”

“Matter of arf an hour, sir.”

As this means a matter of an hour, I ask if he can’t get us up something in a shorter time.  He suggests that chops can be cooked sooner.

“Chops be it, then.  In the words of the immortal Pickwick, chops and tomato sauce.”

“No tomarter sauce, sir,” with profound gravity.

“Sparrowgrass, then—­chops and sparrowgrass.”