"I shall
miss you if you don't."

Miss Hitty affected not to hear, but she was mollified, none the less.

From his patient's window, Doctor Ralph observed the enemy in full
retreat, and laughed gleefully. "What is funny?" queried Araminta, She
had been greatly distressed by the recitative in the back bedroom and
her cheeks were flushed with fever.

"I was just laughing," said Doctor Ralph, "because your aunt has gone
home and is never coming back here any more."

"Oh, Doctor Ralph! Isn't she?" There was alarm in Araminta's voice,
but her grey eyes were shining.

"Never any more," he assured her, in a satisfied tone. "How long have
you lived with Aunt Hitty?"

"Ever since I was a baby."

"H--m! And how old are you now?"

"Almost nineteen."

"Where did you go to school?"

"I didn't go to school. Aunt Hitty taught me, at home."

"Didn't you ever have anybody to play with?"

"Only Aunt Hitty. We used to play a quilt game. I sewed the little
blocks together, and she made the big ones."

"Must have been highly exciting. Didn't you ever have a doll?"

"Oh, no!" Araminta's eyes were wide and reproachful now. "The Bible
says 'thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.'"

Doctor Ralph sighed deeply, put his hands in his pockets, and paced
restlessly across Araminta's bare, nun-like chamber. As though in a
magic mirror, he saw her nineteen years of deprivation, her cramped and
narrow childhood, her dense ignorance of life. No playmates, no
dolls--nothing but Aunt Hitty. She had kept Araminta wrapped in cotton
wool, mentally; shut her out from the world, and persistently shaped
her toward a monastic ideal.

A child brought up in a convent could have been no more of a nun in
mind and spirit than Araminta. Ralph well knew that the stern
guardianship had not been relaxed a moment, either by night or by day.
Miss Mehitable had a well-deserved reputation for thoroughness in
whatever she undertook.

And Araminta was made for love. Ralph turned to look at her as she lay
on her pillow, her brown, wavy hair rioting about her flushed face.
Araminta's great grey eyes were very grave and sweet; her mouth was
that of a lovable child. Her little hands were dimpled at the
knuckles, in fact, as Ralph now noted; there were many dimples
appertaining to Araminta.

One of them hovered for an instant about the corner of her mouth. "Why
must you walk?" she asked. "Is it because you're glad your ankle isn't