Miss Cherry sighed--very softly, but still she did sigh: over forty, but still in the position and with many of the sentiments of a girl. People laugh at the combination, but it is a touching one on the whole. What ages of lingering monotonous life had passed over her since her present companion began his practice, since her Aunt Charity had begun to be an old woman! Dr. Maxwell had married, had lost his wife, had gone through perhaps sharper troubles than Miss Cherry had known. He was now middle-aged and stoutish and weather-beaten--weather-beaten in aspect and in soul--while she was slim and soft and maidenly still. The sigh was half for those uneventful years, and half for the undevelopment which she was conscious of--the unchangedness of herself, underneath the outer guise, which was changed; but this was not safe ground, nor could it be talked of. So she brushed away the sigh with a little cough, and added quickly: ‘I know perhaps what nerves are better than my aunt does, and I know Annie better. Tell me seriously, Mr. Maxwell, now we are alone. You don’t apprehend anything serious? Should she go on travelling and running about as they do if there is really anything the matter? No one can be so much interested as I am. You would be quite frank with me?’ ‘It is the best thing for her,’ said the doctor. ‘You now--I should not say the same for you. You are a tranquil person and patient; but for her, the more she runs about the better. It distracts her and keeps her from thinking. If she worries, it’s all over with a woman like that.’ ‘She has so little to worry about.’ ‘Just so; and the less one has to bear the less one is fit for; that is to say,’ said the doctor, getting up and going to the window, ‘the less some people are fit for. There’s that old aunt of yours to prove me a fool. She has never had anything to bear, that I know of; and she is strong enough to bear anything. Sixty-eight, and just look at her. There’s a _physique_ for you--that is the kind of woman,’ Mr. Maxwell said, with a little outburst of professional enthusiasm, ‘that I admire--as straight as a rod still, and every faculty in good order. That a woman like that should never have married is a loss to the world.’