f-amused perception of what she made of it. "Well, so far as
it's trifling with me to pity me so much."

"He doesn't pity you," Susie earnestly reasoned. "He just--the same as
any one else--likes you."

"He has no business then to like me. He's not the same as any one else."

"Why not, if he wants to work for you?"

Milly gave her another look, but this time a wonderful smile. "Ah there
you are!" Mrs. Stringham coloured, for there indeed she was again. But
Milly let her off. "Work for me, all the same--work for me! It's of
course what I want." Then as usual she embraced her friend. "I'm not
going to be as nasty as this to _him_."

"I'm sure I hope not!"--and Mrs. Stringham laughed for the kiss. "I've
no doubt, however, he'd take it from you! It's _you_, my dear, who are
not the same as any one else."

Milly's assent to which, after an instant, gave her the last word. "No,
so that people can take anything from me." And what Mrs. Stringham did
indeed resignedly take after this was the absence on her part of any
account of the visit then paid. It was the beginning in fact between
them of an odd independence--an independence positively of action and
custom--on the subject of Milly's future. They went their separate ways
with the girl's intense assent; this being really nothing but what she
had so wonderfully put in her plea for after Mrs. Stringham's first
encounter with Sir Luke. She fairly favoured the idea that Susie had or
was to have other encounters--private pointed personal; she favoured
every idea, but most of all the idea that she herself was to go on as
if nothing were the matter. Since she was to be worked for that would
be her way; and though her companions learned from herself nothing of
it this was in the event her way with her medical adviser. She put her
visit to him on the simplest ground; she had come just to tell him how
touched she had been by his good nature. That required little
explaining, for, as Mrs. Stringham had said, he quite understood he
could but reply that it was all right.

"I had a charming quarter of an hour with that clever lady. You've got
good friends."

"So each one of them thinks of all the others. But so I also think,"
Milly went on, "of all of them together. You're excellent for each
other. And it's in that way, I dare say, that you're best for me."

There came to her on this occasion one of the strangest of her
impressions, which was at the same time one of the finest of