y the
doorway. He sprang to pick up the flowers. Hetty looked at him without
speaking. "I was waiting here to see you, Miss Gunn," he said, as
he gave back the flowers. "I am very sorry to be obliged to speak to
you,"--here Hetty's eyes twinkled, and a slight, almost imperceptible,
but very comic grimace passed over her face. She was thinking to
herself, "Honest, that! I expect he is very sorry,"--"I am very sorry to
have to speak to you about Mrs. Little," he continued; "but I think it
is my duty to tell you that she is sinking very fast."

"What! Sally! what is the matter with her?" exclaimed Hetty. "Come right
in here, doctor;" and she threw open the sitting-room door, and, leading
him in, sank into the nearest chair, and said, like a little child:

"Oh, dear! what shall I do?"

Dr. Eben looked at her for a second, scrutinizingly.

This was not the sort of person he had expected to see in Miss Hetty
Gunn. This was an impulsive, outspoken, loving woman, without a trace of
any thing masculine about her, unless it were a certain something in the
quality of her frankness, which was masculine rather than feminine; it
was more purely objective than women's frankness is wont to be: this Dr.
Eben thought out later; at present, he only thought: "Poor girl! I've
got to hurt her sadly."

"You don't mean that Sally's going to die, do you?" said Hetty, in a
clear, unflinching tone.

"I am afraid she will, Miss Gunn," replied Dr. Eben, "not immediately;
perhaps not for some months: but there seems to be a general failure of
all the vital forces. I cannot rouse her, body or soul."

"Nonsense!" said Hetty. "If rousing is all she wants, surely we can
rouse her somehow. Isn't there any thing wrong with her anywhere?"

Dr. Eben smiled in spite of himself at this off-hand, non-professional
view of the case; but he answered, sadly:

"Not what you mean by any thing wrong; if there were, it would be easier
to cure her."

Hetty knitted her brows, and looked at him in her turn, scrutinizingly.
"Have you had patients like her before?"

"Yes," said Dr. Eben.

"Did they all die? Didn't you cure one?" continued Hetty, inexorably.

"I have known persons in such a condition to recover," said Dr. Eben,
with dignity; "but not by the help of medicine so much as by an entire
change of conditions."

"What do you mean by conditions?" said Hetty, never having heard, in her
simple and healthful life, of anybody's needing what is called a