ve and feeling had relaxed. She was
almost ill enough to be regularly nursed herself. She alternated between
her bed in the dressing room and an easy-chair opposite her husband's,
at his fireside. Miss Sampson knew when she was really wanted, whether
the emergency were more or less obvious. She knew the mischief of a
change of hands at such a time. And so she stayed on, though she did
sleep comfortably of a night, and had many an hour of rest in the
daytime, when Faith would come into the nursery and constitute herself
her companion.

Miss Sampson was to her like a book to be read, whereof she turned but a
leaf or so at a time, as she had accidental opportunity, yet whose every
page rendered up a deep, strong--above all, a most sound and healthy
meaning.

She turned over a leaf, one day, in this wise.

"Miss Sampson, how came you, at first, to be a sick nurse?"

The shadow of some old struggle seemed to come over Miss Sampson's face,
as she answered, briefly:

"I wanted to find the very toughest sort of a job to do."

Faith looked up, surprised.

"But I heard you tell my father that you had been nursing more than
twenty years. You must have been quite a young woman when you began. I
wonder--"

"You wonder why I wasn't like most other young women, I suppose. Why I
didn't get married, perhaps, and have folks of my own to take care of?
Well, I didn't; and the Lord gave me a pretty plain indication that He
hadn't laid out that kind of a life for me. So then I just looked around
to find out what better He had for me to do. And I hit on the very work
I wanted. A trade that it took all the old Sampson grit to follow. I
made up my mind, as the doctor says, that _somebody_ in the world had
got to choose drumsticks, and I might as well take hold of one."

"But don't you ever get tired of it all, and long for something to rest
or amuse you?"

"Amuse! I couldn't be amused, child. I've been in too much awful earnest
ever to be much amused again. No, I want to die in the harness. It's
hard work I want. I couldn't have been tied down to a common, easy sort
of life. I want something to fight and grapple with; and I'm thankful
there's been a way opened for me to do good according to my nature. If I
hadn't had sickness and death to battle against, I should have got into
human quarrels, maybe, just for the sake of feeling ferocious."

"And you always take the very worst and hardest cases, Dr. Gracie says."

"What's the use