ing to THEM," said the doctor, still smiling; "but you
know a woman's sympathy and presence in a sickroom is often the best of
tonics or sedatives."

Miss Trotter raised her eyes to the speaker with a half critical
impatience.

"The fact is," the doctor went on, "I have a favor to ask of you for our
patient. It seems that the other morning a new chambermaid waited upon
him, whom he found much more gentle and sympathetic in her manner than
the others, and more submissive and quiet in her ways--possibly because
she is a foreigner, and accustomed to servitude. I suppose you have no
objection to HER taking charge of his room?"

Miss Trotter's cheek slightly flushed. Not from wounded vanity, but
from the consciousness of some want of acumen that had made her make a
mistake. She had really believed, from her knowledge of the patient's
character and the doctor's preamble, that he wished HER to show some
more kindness and personal sympathy to the young man, and had even been
prepared to question its utility! She saw her blunder quickly, and at
once remembering that the pretty Swedish girl had one morning taken the
place of an absent fellow servant, in the rebound from her error, she
said quietly: "You mean Frida! Certainly! she can look after his
room, if he prefers her." But for her blunder she might have added
conscientiously that she thought the girl would prove inefficient, but
she did not. She remembered the incident of the wood; yet if the girl
had a lover in the wood, she could not urge it as a proof of incapacity.
She gave the necessary orders, and the incident passed.

Visiting the patient a few days afterward, she could not help noticing a
certain shy gratitude in Mr. Calton's greeting of her, which she quietly
ignored. This forced the ingenuous Chris to more positive speech.
He dwelt with great simplicity and enthusiasm on the Swedish girl's
gentleness and sympathy. "You have no idea of--her--natural tenderness,
Miss Trotter," he stammered naively. Miss Trotter, remembering the
wood, thought to herself that she had some faint idea of it, but did not
impart what it was. He spoke also of her beauty, not being clever enough
to affect an indifference or ignorance of it, which made Miss Trotter
respect him and smile an unqualified acquiescence. Frida certainly was
pretty! But when he spoke of her as "Miss Jansen," and said she was so
much more "ladylike and refined than the other servants," she replied by
asking him i