"It is a pity about my age," went on Annie ingenuously, lamenting over her deficiency in years as other people lament over their superfluity in that respect, "but it is a fault which will mend every day. I have found out that there are two hospitals which make twenty-three--just a year older than I am--the age of admission for probationers, and there is one hospital that admits them at twenty. Would not the fact of my being a doctor's daughter go for something? Have you not interest, father, if you care to exert it, to get the hospital authorities to stretch a point where I am concerned? You might tell them that I am the eldest of the family," drawing up her not very tall figure, "that I have been treated as grown-up for years and years, and that I have several younger sisters whom I have tried to keep in order." There was a returning twinkle in Annie's brown eyes and a comical curve of her rosy lips. But she relapsed into extreme gravity the next moment; indeed, she was more agitated than she had yet been, and for Annie to betray an approach to tearfulness was a rare spectacle. "There is something worse than my age. I am afraid I am not half good enough. I have a hasty temper; you have frequently said so, mother. I often speak sharply, and am not always aware when I am doing it. I hurt people, as I hurt myself, without being able to help it--something seems to come over me and impel me to do it. Often I cannot resist making game of people. I am so silly and fond of fun, like a child, a great deal worse than 'little May' ever is, when the fit is upon me. Now, if I could think that I should lose patience with poor sick people, and wound instead of comforting them, or that I should find them food for my love of the ridiculous, and forget and neglect their wants in following my own amusement, I should hate myself--I would die sooner than so disgrace a nurse's calling." "You would not do it, my dear," said Dr. Millar, with calm conviction. "Why, what treason is this you are speaking against yourself?" cried Mrs. Millar, bristling up in her daughter's defence, the assailant being that daughter. "You unkind or unfeeling when there was any call for kindness--whoever heard of such a thing? I should as soon suspect Dora of harshness or levity in the same circumstances. Don't you remember my bad eyes last winter, when I had to get that tincture dropped into them so often that your father could not always be at home to do it? You dropped the tincture as well as your father could, and though I know I must have made faces wry enough to frighten a cat, you never vouchsafed a remark, and I did not hear the ghost of a laugh. Poor Dora was ready to read to me by the hour, and to fetch and carry for me all day long, but when she tried to drop the tincture her hand shook so that she sent the liquid down my cheeks; and she was so frightened for giving me pain that I could see when I opened my eyes she was as white as a sheet, and fit to faint herself."