"But I should not want to come alone," said the doctor.

"No," said Hetty, reflectively. "It would be dull, I shouldn't like it
myself, to be here all alone. The sea is the loneliest of things in the
universe, I think. The fields and the woods and the hills all look as
if they had good fellowship with each other perpetually; but the great,
blank, bare sea, looks for ever alone; and sometimes the waves seem
to me to run up on the shore as fiercely as starved wolves leaping on
prey!"

"Not on this little comfortable beach, though," said Dr. Eben.

"Oh, no!" replied Hetty, "I did not mean such sea-shore as this. But
even here, I should find it sad if I were alone."

"All places are sad if one is alone, Miss Gunn," replied the doctor, in
a pensive tone, rare with him. Hetty turned a surprised glance at him,
and did not speak for a moment. Then she said:

"Yes; but nobody need be alone: there are always plenty of people to
take into one's house. If you are lonely, why don't you get somebody
to live with you, or you might be married," she added, in as purely
matter-of-fact a tone, as she would have said, "you might take a
journey," or "you might build on a wing to your house."

This suggestion sounded oddly enough, coming so soon from the lips of
the woman whom the doctor had just been ardently wishing he could marry;
but its cool and unembarrassed tone was sufficient to corroborate his
utmost disheartenment.

"Ah!" he thought, "I knew she didn't care any thing for me!" and he fell
into a silent brown study which Hetty did not attempt to break. This was
one among her many charms to Dr. Eben, that she was capable of sitting
quietly by a person's side for long intervals of silence. The average
woman, when she is in the company of even a single person, seems to
consider herself derelict in duty, if conversation is not what she calls
"kept up;" an instinctive phrase, which, by its universal use, is the
bitterest comment on its own significance. Men have no such feeling. Two
men will sit by each other's side, it may be for hours, in silence,
and feel no derogation from good comradeship. Why should not women? The
answer is too evident. Women have a perpetual craving to be recognized,
to be admired; and a large part of their ceaseless chatter is no more
nor less than a surface device to call your attention to them; as little
children continually pull your gown to make you look at them. Hetty was
incapable of this. She was a