she took her seat, and was glad to have fairly gained the shelter of the high-backed pew as she bent her head. But Miss Prince the senior seemed calm; she said her prayer, settled herself as usual, putting the footstool in its right place and finding the psalms and the collect. She then laid the prayer-book on the cushion beside her and folded her hands in her lap, before she turned discreetly to say good-morning to Miss Fraley, and exchange greetings until the clergyman made his appearance. Nan had taken the seat next the pew door, and was looking about her with great interest, forgetting herself and her aunt as she wondered that so dear and quaint a place of worship should be still left in her iconoclastic native country. She had seen nothing even in Boston like this, there were so many antique splendors about the chancel, and many mural tablets on the walls, where she read with sudden delight her own family name and the list of virtues which had belonged to some of her ancestors. The dear old place! there never had been and never could be any church like it; it seemed to have been waiting all her life for her to come to say her prayers where so many of her own people had brought their sins and sorrows in the long years that were gone. She only wished that the doctor were with her, and the same feeling that used to make her watch for him in her childhood until he smiled back again filled all her loving and grateful heart. She knew that he must be thinking of her that morning; he was not in church himself, he had planned a long drive to the next town but one, to see a dying man, who seemed to be helped only by this beloved physician's presence. There had been some talk between Dr. Leslie and Nan about a medicine which might possibly be of use, and she found herself thinking about that again and again. She had reminded the doctor of it and he had seemed very pleased. It must be longer ago than yesterday since she left Oldfields, it already counted for half a lifetime.