hall and on the stairs; his voice rang cheery, whenever
the door of Sally's room stood open. Hetty found herself more and more
conscious of his presence: each day she felt a half guilty desire to see
him again; she caught herself watching for his knock, listening for his
step; she even went so far as to wonder in a half impatient way why he
never sent for her, to give her the directions about Sally, instead of
giving them to the nurse. She little dreamed that Doctor Eben was as
anxious to avoid seeing her, as she had been to avoid seeing him. He had
a strangely resentful feeling towards Hetty, as if she were a personal
friend who had been treacherous to him. She was the only one of all the
partisans of Doctor Tuthill that he could not sympathize with and
heartily forgive. He would have found it very hard to explain why he
thus singled out Hetty, but he had done so from the outset. Strange
forerunning instinct of love, which uttered its prophecy in an unknown
tongue in an alien country! There came a day before long, when Doctor
Eben and Hetty were forced to forget all their prejudices, and to come
together on a common ground, where no antagonisms could exist.

Sally and the baby were both very ill. Hetty, in her inexperience of
illness, had not realized how serious a symptom Sally's long continued
prostration was. In her own busy and active life, the days flew by
almost uncounted: she was out early and late, walking or riding over the
farm; and when she came back to Sally's room, and found her always with
the same placid smile, and fair untroubled face, and heard always the
same patient reply, "Very comfortable, thank you, dear Hetty," it never
occurred to her that any thing was wrong. It seemed strange to her that
the baby was so still, that he neither cried nor laughed like other
babies; and it seemed to her very hard for Sally to have to be shut up
in the house so long: but this was all; she was totally unprepared for
any thought of danger, and the shock was terrible to her, when the
thought came. It was on a sunny day in May, one of those incredible
summer days which New England sometimes flashes out like frost-set
jewels in her icy spring. Hetty had listened, as usual, to hear the
Doctor leave Sally's room: she was more than usually impatient to have
him go, for she was waiting to take in to Sally a big basket of arbutus
blossoms which old Caesar had gathered, and had brought to Hetty with a
characteristic speech.