“I never did like her. I pitied her. I always thought her a poor, flimsy little thing. But that oughtn’t to make any difference, if she was in trouble.” “No,” Mrs. Breen conceded, and in compensation Grace admitted something more on her side: “She’s worse than she used to be,—sillier. I don’t suppose she has a wrong thought; but she’s as light as foam.” “Oh, it isn’t the _wicked_ people who, do the harm,” said Mrs. Breen. “I was sure that this air would be everything for her; and so it would, with any ordinary case. But a child would take better care of itself. I have to watch her every minute, _like_ a child; and I never know what she will do next.” “Yes; it’s a burden,” said Mrs. Breen, with a sympathy which she had not expressed before. “And you’re a good girl, Grace,” she added in very unwonted recognition. The grateful tears stole into the daughter’s eyes, but she kept a firm face, even after they began to follow one another down her cheeks. “And if Louise hadn’t come, you know, mother, that I was anxious to have some older person with me when I went to Fall River. I was glad to have this respite; it gives me a chance to think. I felt a little timid about beginning alone.” “A man wouldn’t,” Mrs. Breen remarked. “No. I am not a man. I have accepted that; with all the rest. I don’t rebel against being a woman. If I had been a man, I shouldn’t have studied medicine. You know that. I wished to be a physician because I was a woman, and because—because—I had failed where—other women’s hopes are.” She said it out firmly, and her mother softened to her in proportion to the girl’s own strength. “I might have been just a nurse. You know I should have been willing to be that, but I thought I could be something more. But it’s no use talking.” She added, after an interval, in which her mother rocked to and fro with a gentle motion that searched the joints of her chair, and brought out its most plaintive squeak in pathetic iteration, and watched Grace, as she sat looking seaward through the open window, “I think it’s rather hard, mother, that you should be always talking as if I wished to take my calling mannishly. All that I intend is not to take it womanishly; but as for not being a woman about it, or about anything, that’s simply impossible. A woman is reminded of her insufficiency to herself every hour of the day. And it’s always a man that comes to her help. I dropped some things out of my lap down there, and by the time I had gathered them up I was wound round and round with linen thread so that I couldn’t move a step, and Mr. Libby cut me loose. I could have done it myself, but it seemed right and natural that he should do it. I dare say he plumed himself upon his service to me,—that would be natural, too. I have things enough to keep me meek, mother!” She did not look round at Mrs. Breen, who said, “I think you are morbid about it.”