If one man had been a stayer at home; a vegetable nature, as Dr. Leslie had gone on to say, which has no power to change its locality or to better itself by choosing another and more adequate or stimulating soil; the other had developed the opposite extreme of character, being by nature a rover.  From the medical school he had entered at once upon the duties of a naval appointment, and after he had become impatient of its routine of practice and its check upon his freedom, he had gone, always with some sufficient and useful object, to one far country after another.  Lately he had spent an unusual number of consecutive months in Japan, which was still unfamiliar even to most professional travelers, and he had come back to America enthusiastic and full of plans for many enterprises which his shrewd, but not very persistent brain had conceived.  The two old friends were delighted to see each other, but they took this long-deferred meeting as calmly as if they were always next-door neighbors.  It was a most interesting thing that while they led such different lives and took such apparently antagonistic routes of progression, they were pretty sure to arrive at the same conclusion, though it might appear otherwise to a listener who knew them both slightly.

“And who is the little girl?” asked Dr. Ferris, who had refused his entertainer’s cigars and produced a pipe from one pocket, after having drawn a handful of curious small jade figures from another and pushed them along the edge of the study table, without comment, for his friend to look at.  Some of them were so finely carved that they looked like a heap of grotesque insects struggling together as they lay there, but though Dr. Leslie’s eyes brightened as he glanced at them, he gave no other sign of interest at that time, and answered his guest’s question instead.

“She is a ward of mine,” he said; “she was left quite alone by the death of her grandmother some months ago, and so I brought her here.”

“It isn’t often that I forget a face,” said Dr. Ferris, “but I have been trying to think what association I can possibly have with that child.  I remember at last; she looks like a young assistant surgeon who was on the old frigate Fortune with me just before I left the service.  I don’t think he was from this part of the country though; I never heard what became of him.”

“I dare say it was her father; I believe he made a voyage or two,” said Dr. Leslie, much interested.  “Do you know anything more about him? you always remember everything, Ferris.”

“Yes,” answered the guest, slowly puffing away at his pipe.  “Yes, he was a very bright fellow, with a great gift at doctoring, but he was willful, full of queer twists and fancies, the marry in haste and repent at his leisure sort of young man.”

“Exactly what he did, I suppose,” interrupted the host.  “Only his leisure was fortunately postponed to the next world, for the most part; he died very young.”