nurse and determined to make that silent woman talk. At first it
was difficult, for I tried to discover her feelings, her attitude, her
history. As to the first two of these I met only failure and the last
was pathetically simple. An orphan she was, a bread-winner, an
observer. I say it was pathetic, but not that _she_ was. Things are
changing rapidly with women, I can see that plainly, but twenty years
ago a man still felt, ridiculously perhaps, that a kindly, competent
woman, however successful in her chosen profession, must needs be, in
the very nature of the case, even more kindly and more competent with
a child on her lap and an arm about her waist. If in the new doctrine
of the Brotherhood of Man it is admitted that we owe each our debt to
humanity and posterity, I, for one, have never been able to understand
why women should not pay that debt in the coinage most obviously
provided them for the purpose. The Brotherhood of Man is a great idea,
but surely without the Motherhood of Woman it would grow a little
shadowy and impractical. (I speak as a fool!)

And so, I repeat, there was something a little pathetic to me in
Harriet Buxton's life, though nothing in the least pathetic in her
personality or her actions. Do not turn on me too fiercely, dear
ladies, and demand of me with your well-known remorseless logic, what
would have become of me if Harriet Buxton had not been beside me in my
delirium, with nothing but a clinical thermometer on her knee, and a
white apron around her waist. Do not, I beg you, for I shall shock all
your strict habits of mind by taking refuge in blind, illogical
instinct and reiterating my firm conviction that though I perish,
truth is so, and that Nature had a better use for Harriet's lap and
waist. She had! (as you used to say in the old emotional era) she
had!! _She had!!!_

Well, in despair of eliciting anything romantic from her, I languidly
inquired as to her travels. They were not extensive: this was her
first "trip abroad." It had been rather a failure, in a way, for
although she had been engaged with the understanding that her passage
was to be paid both ways, her patient on recovery had decided to spend
the summer abroad, and had made it very evident that she did not
consider herself any longer responsible for her nurse under these
circumstances!

"You should have taken legal advice," I expostulated, "the woman was
dishonest. It was shocking, Miss Buxton--surely you could have d