am sure you are mistaken. I am too old to be married, for one thing: I
shall be thirty-seven in the fall. That's reason enough, if there were
no other. A man can't fall in love with a woman after she's as old as
that."

Dr. Eben laughed outright. He could not help it.

"There!" said Hetty, triumphantly; "that's right; I like to hear you
laugh now; for goodness' sake, let's forget all this. I will, if you
will; and we will be all the better friends for it perhaps. At any rate,
you'll be all the more friend to me for having saved you from making
such a blunder as thinking you were in love with me."

Dr. Eben was on the point of persisting farther; but he suddenly thought
to himself:

"I'd better not: I might make her angry. I'll take the friendship
platform for the present: that is some gain."

"You will permit me then to be your friend, Miss Gunn," he said.

"Why, certainly," said Hetty, in a matter-of-fact way: "I thought we
were very good friends now."

"But you recollect, you distinctly told me I was to come only as
physician to Mrs. Little," retorted the doctor.

Hetty colored: the darkness sheltered her.

"Oh! that was a long time ago," she said in a remorseful tone: "I should
be very ungrateful if I had not forgotten that."

And with this Dr. Eben was forced to be contented. When he thought the
whole thing over, he admitted to himself that he had fared as well as he
had a right to expect, and that he had gained a very sure vantage, in
having committed the loyal Hetty to the assertion that they were
friends. He half dreaded to see her the next morning, lest there should
be some change, some constraint in her manner; not a shade of it. He
could have almost doubted his own recollections of the evening before,
if such a thing had been possible, so absolutely unaltered was Hetty's
treatment of him. She had been absolutely honest in all she said: she
did honestly believe that his fancied love for her was a sentimental
mistake, a caprice born of idleness and lack of occupation, and she did
honestly intend to forget the whole thing, and to make him forget it.
And so they went back to the farm, where the summer awaited them with
overflowing harvests of every thing, and Hetty's hands were so full that
very soon she had almost ceased to recollect the life at "The Runs."
Sally and the baby were strong and well. The whole family seemed newly
glad and full of life. All odd hours they could snatch from work, Old
Caesa