for me to do, and--I began to be afraid I
had missed it somehow. Once I thought I should like to be a teacher,
and come back here when I was through school and look after the
village children. I had such splendid ideas about that, but they all
faded out. I went into the school-house one day, and I thought I would
rather die than be shut up there from one week's end to another."

"No," said Dr. Leslie, with grave composure. "No, I don't feel sure
that you would do well to make a teacher of yourself."

"I wish that I had known when school was over that I must take care of
myself, as one or two of the girls meant to do, and sometimes it seems
as if I ought," said Nan, after a silence of a few minutes, and this
time it was very hard to speak. "You have been so kind, and have done
so much for me; I supposed at first there was money enough of my own,
but I know now."

"Dear child!" the doctor exclaimed, "you will never know, unless you
are left alone as I was, what a blessing it is to have somebody to
take care of and to love; I have put you in the place of my own little
child, and have watched you grow up here, with more thankfulness every
year. Don't ever say another word to me about the money part of it.
What had I to spend money for? And now I hear you say all these
despairing things; but I am an old man, and I take them for what they
are worth. You have a few hard months before you, perhaps, but before
you know it they will be over with. Don't worry yourself; look after
Marilla a little, and that new hand-maid, and drive about with me.
To-morrow I must be on the road all day, and, to tell the truth, I
must think over one or two of my cases before I go to bed. Won't you
hand me my old prescription book? I was trying to remember something
as I came home."

Nan, half-comforted, went to find the book, while Dr. Leslie, puffing
his cigar-smoke very fast, looked up through the cloud abstractedly at
a new ornament which had been placed above the mantel shelf since we
first knew the room. Old Captain Finch had solaced his weary and
painful last years by making a beautiful little model of a ship, and
had left it in his will to the doctor. There never was a more touching
gift, this present owner often thought, and he had put it in its place
with reverent hands. A comparison of the two lives came stealing into
his mind, and he held the worn prescription-book a minute before he
opened it. The poor old captain waiting to be relea