"I really think we must go home.
Sally seems perfectly well, and baby too: do you not think it will be
quite safe to take them back?" he gave an actual start, and colored.
Professionally, Dr. Eben was more ashamed of himself in that instant
than he had ever been in his life. He had absolutely forgotten, for many
days, that it was in the capacity of a physician that he was living on
this shore of the sea. They had been at "The Runs" now two months; and,
except in his weekly visits to Lonway Corners, he had hardly
recollected that he was a physician at all. The sea and the wind had
been Sally's real physicians, and the baby's; and as for the other two,
in the happy quartette, had they needed a physician? Perhaps; but no
physician was there for them.

"Certainly! certainly!" he stammered, "it will be safe;" and his face
grew redder and redder, as he spoke. Hetty looked at him in honest
amazement. She could put but one interpretation on his manner.

"Why, there is no need of our going yet, if it isn't best. Don't look
so! Sally can stay here all summer if it will do her good."

"You misunderstood me, Miss Gunn," said the doctor, now himself again.
"It will really be perfectly safe for Mrs. Little to go home. She is
entirely well."

"What did you mean then?" said Hetty, looking him straight in the eye
with honest perplexity in her face. "You looked as if you didn't think
it best to go."

"No, Miss Gunn," replied Dr. Eben. "I looked as if I did not want to go.
It has been so pleasant here: that was all."

"Oh," said Hetty, in a relieved tone, "was that it? I feel just so, too:
it has been delightful; it is the only real play-spell I ever had in my
life. But for all that I'm really impatient to get home: they need me on
the farm; the men have not been doing just as they ought to. Jim Little
is all right when I'm there; but they take advantage of him when I'm
away. I really must get home before haying. I think we must certainly go
some day next week."

Dr. Eben was just going over to town for the letters. As he walked
slowly down to the beach, he said to himself:

"Haying! By Jove!" and this was pretty much all he thought during the
whole of the hour that he spent in rowing to and from the Safe Haven
wharf. "Haying!" he ejaculated again, and again. "What a woman that is!
I believe if we were all dead, she'd have just as keen an eye to that
haying!"

By "we all" in that sentence of his soliloquy, Dr. Eben really meant