to
avoid such accidents, for I really think it makes them worse when they
do happen."

"Very well, my dear, you know your own feelings best," said Mrs. Millar,
a little puzzled. In her day it was reckoned no more than what was due
to maidenly delicacy and social propriety to preserve a respectful
distance between a rejected man and his rejector. As if the gentleman
might, as Dora had said, carry off the lady by force, or shoot her or
himself with the pistol hidden in his breast!

CHAPTER XVI.

ROSE'S FOLLY AND ANNIE'S WISDOM.

Annie Millar not only warmed to her work in St. Ebbe's, she recovered
her full glow of health and spirits. She not only liked her nursing, she
enjoyed her holiday hours intensely with the peculiarly keen enjoyment
of busy women doing excellent service in the world. If any one wishes to
know what such enjoyment is like let him have recourse to a great
authority. "_In the few hours of holiday that--only now and then--they
(a nursing sisterhood) allow themselves, they show none of the weariness
that sometimes follows the industry of toiling after self-amusement.
Reaction, after great strain on the powers of self-sacrifice and
endurance that they have to exert, may be thought to account in some
part for the happy result; but, whatever the cause, their society has in
it all that can best and most surely attract--grace, freshness, and
natural charm._"[1]

[Footnote 1: Kinglake in his _History of the Crimean
War_, vol. vi. p. 436.]

Rose felt as if she had never sufficiently appreciated Annie before. She
was very proud of her sister now when she came to Welby Square, and
everybody, whether in Mrs. Jennings's set or in Hester's, was struck
with Annie's beauty and brightness.

Even Hester Jennings saw nothing to find fault with on the ornamental
side of a girl who had gone in so heartily for the serious business of
life, nine-tenths of whose hours were occupied with grave tasks, to
which Hester owned honestly that she with all her public spirit was not
equal.

Annie's face was not only the most unclouded, her laugh the merriest of
all the faces and laughs which appeared and were heard in Welby Square.
She became almost as much of a peacemaker, a smoother-down of rough
interludes, an allayer of irritating ebullitions, as Dora was wont to be
at home.

"Annie is so much improved," Rose wrote to May, "I never saw her looking
prettier. She is just splendid when she comes out of St. Ebbe's f