d not know--I thought--"

"Your thought was a perfectly natural one, Miss Gunn," interrupted
the doctor, pitying her confusion. "I have never had need to make my
profession a source of income: I have no ambition to be rich; and, as
I am alone in the world, I can afford to do what many other physicians
could not."

"When can you tell if you could go?" continued Hetty, not apparently
hearing what the doctor had said.

"She only thinks of me as she would of a chair or a carriage which would
make her friend more comfortable," thought the doctor; "and why should
she think of me in any other way," he added, impatient with himself for
the selfish thought.

"To-morrow," said he, curtly. "If I can go, I will; and there is no time
to be lost."

Hetty nodded her head, but did not speak another word: she was too near
crying; and to have cried in the presence of Dr. Eben Williams would
have mortified Hetty to the core.

"Oh, to think," she said to herself, "that, after all, I should have to
be under such obligations to that man! But it is all for Sally's sake,
poor dear child. How good he is to her! If he were anybody else, I
should like him with all my heart."

The next morning, as Dr. Williams walked slowly up the avenue, he
saw Hetty standing in the doorway, shading her eyes with her hand and
looking towards him. The morning sun shone full upon her, and made
glints of golden light here and there in her thick brown curls. Hetty
had worn her hair in the same style for fifteen years; short, clustering
curls close to her head on either side, and a great mass of curls
falling over a comb at the back. If Hetty had a vanity it was of her
hair; and it was a vanity one was forced to forgive,--it had such
excellent reason for being. The picture which she made in the doorway,
at this moment, Dr. Eben never forgot: a strange pleasure thrilled
through him at the sight. As he drew near, she ran down the steps
towards him; ran down with no more thought or consciousness of the
appearance of welcoming him, than if she had been a child of seven: she
was impatient to know whether Sally could go to the sea-shore. This
man who approached held the decision in his hands; and he was, at that
moment, no more to Hetty than any messenger bringing word which she was
eager to hear. But Dr. Eben would have been more or less than man, could
he have seen, unmoved, the swift motion, the outstretched hands, the
eager eyes, the bright cheeks, the sunlit h