As they all crowded around the door-way at my leave-taking, and the other house-doctors came over from the Dispensary, I saw regretfully that Breynton was not among them; the night before he had said he would surely see me again. But as the cab left the hospital grounds and I leaned out for a last look at the College, I saw Breynton signalling the cab-man to stop--he had stationed himself there at the entrance to say good-bye. It touched me to see his altered manner--instead of his jovial hectoring ways, a big brotherly fondness and regret showed in face and voice. A warm handclasp, then, as the horses started up, his wholesome smile shone out encouragingly, and he said in his old bantering way, “So _this_ is the last of the ‘Little Angel’!” The cab whirled me to the station, the same station where Belle and I had landed three and one half years before when we had come to this strange city--the city I was now leaving with such a store of memories! It had grown very clear, it always will be dear--my beloved Boston! CHAPTER XI THROUGH THE GATE OF DREAMS Much of the good fortune that has come to me has come unsought: Shortly after returning home from Boston an elderly friend of our family, an invalid who spent her winters in Florida, invited me to go there with her. In my somewhat reduced state of health the invitation was most opportune. My first glimpse of New York, as we stopped there on the way, made Boston seem small. We started for the South at night. I was a bit timid at going so far from home with the frail little old woman who had tuberculosis, and already had had alarming hemorrhages, and who calmly told me that she would probably die while in the South that winter. With only a kit of medicines and my inexperience to cope with what might arise, I felt rather helpless; but my patient had a stout heart and a cheery disposition, and was soon enjoying my enthusiasm for experiences and scenes which had become an old story to her. We reached Palatka at sunset one night in February, so the calendar said, but how soft and sweet the air! how like pictures every scene on the street! The palm trees looked artificial, and the orange trees, with both blossoms and fruit on them, reminded me of the toy trees belonging to the Noah’s Ark with which I had played in childhood. Darkies were everywhere, real darkies, with their soft voices and shiftless ways. We had rooms in a fine old comfortable house with a Southern family, and a typical Southern darkey to wait on us who crooned Negro melodies as she lounged around and occasionally did a stroke of work. Her deliberation and her dialect were most amusing. When reminded that her tasks were still undone, she was always “jes’ a-fixin’ to begin to get ready” to do them.