woman's a jewel!" the doctor was saying to himself the other side
of the door: "she is as honest as a man could be. I didn't know there
could be any thing so honest in shape of a woman under fifty: she
doesn't look a day over twenty-five; but, they say she's nearly forty;
it's the strangest thing in life she's never married. I'll wager any
thing, she's wishing this minute I was in Guinea; but she'll put it
through bravely for sake of Sally, as she calls her, and I'll keep out
of her way all I can. If it weren't for the confounded notion she's
taken up against me, I'd like to know her. She's a woman a man could
make a friend of, I do believe," and Dr. Eben jumped into bed, and was
fast asleep in five minutes, and dreamed that Hetty came towards him,
dressed like an Indian, with her brown curls stuck full of painted
porcupine quills, and a tomahawk brandished in her hand.

VI.

The journey was a hard one, though so short. How many times an hour did
Hetty bless the good fortune which had given them Dr. Williams for an
escort! Sally had been so much excited and pleased at the prospect of
the trip to the sea-shore, that she had seemed in the outset far
stronger than she really was. Before mid-day a reaction had set in, and
she had grown so weak that the doctor was evidently alarmed. The baby
disturbed, and frightened by the noise and jar, had wailed almost
incessantly; and Hetty was more nearly at her wits' end than she had
ever been in her life. It was piteous to see her,--usually so brisk, so
authoritative, so unhesitating,--looking helplessly into the face of the
doctor, and saying:

"Oh, what shall we do! what shall we do!" At last, the weary day came to
an end; and when Hetty saw her two sufferers quietly asleep in snowy
beds, in a great airy room, with a blazing log-fire on the hearth, she
drew a long breath, and said to the doctor:

"This is the most awful day I ever lived through."

Dr. Eben smiled. "You have had a life singularly free from troubles,
Miss Gunn."

"No!" said Hetty, "I've had a great deal. But there has always been
something to do. The only things one can't bear, it seems to me, are
where one can't do any thing, like to-day: that poor little baby crying,
crying, and nothing to be done, but to wait for him to stop; and Sally
looking as if she would die any minute; and that screaming steam-engine
whirling us all along as if we were only dead freight. I suppose if
Sally had died, we should