d
no more, but stayed at home, like a cream-fed cat by the fireside, his
grace making the time gay with his tales, his wit, and his worldly
wisdom. He urged me to accompany the commission to the northern coasts,
and one day, when I was debating whether to join in this expedition or
to go down to the West and visit Nancy, the girl settled the question
for me herself by appearing at Stair, and at the first sight of her my
heart sank within me. She had become much thinner, there was the pallor
of sickness in her face, and a weakness both in voice and body as she
clung to me, telling me her joy at seeing me again and that she would
never leave me more. The news of Borthwicke's presence in the house she
received with some surprise, which showed neither pleasure nor regret,
going immediately to her rooms, however, making her long journey an
excuse for dining alone.

It was after luncheon on the following day that old Dr. McMurtrie came
into the library and addressed me, with some heat and scant apology.

"John," said he, looking at me over his glasses, "I am going to make
myself disagreeable. I am going to be that damned nuisance, a candid
friend; but somebody's got to speak to you, for you're just letting
that girl of yours kill herself."

I stared at him in speechless wonderment.

"She's killing herself," he went on, relentlessly. "And when it's too
late you'll see the truth of it. No girl's body is equal to the
excitement she's had for years, ever since she was a baby, in fact,
with her charities and her Burn-folking and her verse-writing. It's all
damned nonsense," he summed up, succinctly, "and it's for you to stop
it.

"Instead of helping her get out a second edition of poems," he went on,
"ye'd show more sense if you put your mind to considering the problem
of how much work a woman can do in justice to the race. Every female
creature is in all probability the repository of unborn generations,
and should be trained to think of that solemn fact as a man is taught
to think of his country."

"Some women," I answered, testily, "are forced to work daily at
laborious tasks to support families----"

"And others," he interrupted, "squeeze their feet and give each other
poison; but they are not my patients, and Nancy Stair is. And I think
you'll find that the women who work, as ye say, do most of it with
their bodies, not with their heads or their nerves, and it's in work of
this kind the trouble of female labor lies. N