s and gone in for a country
life. It is all very well to say I did not like it, but I ought to have
made myself like it; or if I could not do that, I ought to have made a
pretence of liking it, and to have stuck to him as long as I lived. I
hadn't even the excuse of having any high purpose before me."

"We all make mistakes in our lives, Cuthbert," the girl said, quietly,
"and it is of no use bemoaning them--at any rate you have done your best
to retrieve yours, and I mean to do my best to retrieve mine. I have
quite made up my mind that when this is over I shall go to London and be
regularly trained as a hospital nurse, and then join a nursing
sisterhood."

"What! and give up woman in general?" Cuthbert said, with a faint laugh.
"Will you abandon your down-trodden sisters? Impossible, Mary."

"It is quite possible," she said, in a business-like manner.

"Become a back-slider! Mary, you absolutely shock me. At present you
have got nursing on the brain. I should have thought that this ambulance
work would have been enough for a life-time. At any rate I should advise
you to think it over very seriously before you commit yourself too
deeply to this new fad. Nursing is one of the greatest gifts of women,
but after all woman wasn't made only to nurse, any more than she was to
devote her life to championing her sex."

Mary did not reply but silently moved off with an air of deeply-offended
dignity.

"What an enthusiastic little woman she is," Cuthbert laughed quietly to
himself; "anyhow she is a splendid nurse, and I would infinitely rather
see her so, than as a female spouter on platforms. I fancied the siege
might have had some effect on her. She has seen something of the
realities of life and was likely to give up theorizing. She looks older
and more womanly, softer a good deal than she was. I think I can improve
that picture now. I had never seen her look soft before, and had to
trust to my imagination. I am sure I can improve it now."

Another fortnight and Cuthbert was out of bed and able to walk about in
the ward and to render little services to other patients.

"Do you know, Mary," he said, one day, when she happened to be idle and
was standing talking to him as he sat on the edge of his bed, "a curious
thing happened to me the very day before we went out on that sortie. I
saw that fellow, Cumming, the rascal that ruined the bank, and then
bolted, you know. For a moment I did not recall his face, but it struck