No danger of Dr. Eben's coming before tea. It was very late when he appeared, valise in hand, and said in a formal tone to Hetty, who met him at the door, in fact had been nervously watching for him for four whole hours: "I am very sorry to see you still up, Miss Gunn. I ought to have recollected to tell you that I should not be here until late: I have been saying good-by to my patients. Will you have the kindness to let me be shown to my room?" and like a very courteous traveller, awaiting a landlady's pleasure, he stood at foot of the stairs. With some confusion of manner, and in a constrained tone, unlike her usual cheery voice, Hetty replied: "The next door to Sally's, doctor." She wished to say something more, but she could not think of a word. "What a fool I am!" she mentally ejaculated, as the doctor, with a hasty "good-night," entered his room. "What a fool I am to let him make me so uncomfortable. I don't see what it is. I wish I hadn't asked him to go." "That woman's a jewel!" the doctor was saying to himself the other side of the door: "she is as honest as a man could be. I didn't know there could be any thing so honest in shape of a woman under fifty: she doesn't look a day over twenty-five; but, they say she's nearly forty; it's the strangest thing in life she's never married. I'll wager any thing, she's wishing this minute I was in Guinea; but she'll put it through bravely for sake of Sally, as she calls her, and I'll keep out of her way all I can. If it weren't for the confounded notion she's taken up against me, I'd like to know her. She's a woman a man could make a friend of, I do believe," and Dr. Eben jumped into bed, and was fast asleep in five minutes, and dreamed that Hetty came towards him, dressed like an Indian, with her brown curls stuck full of painted porcupine quills, and a tomahawk brandished in her hand. VI. The journey was a hard one, though so short. How many times an hour did Hetty bless the good fortune which had given them Dr. Williams for an escort! Sally had been so much excited and pleased at the prospect of the trip to the sea-shore, that she had seemed in the outset far stronger than she really was. Before mid-day a reaction had set in, and she had grown so weak that the doctor was evidently alarmed. The baby disturbed, and frightened by the noise and jar, had wailed almost incessantly; and Hetty was more nearly at her wits' end than she had ever been in her life. It was piteous to see her,--usually so brisk, so authoritative, so unhesitating,--looking helplessly into the face of the doctor, and saying: "Oh, what shall we do! what shall we do!" At last, the weary day came to an end; and when Hetty saw her two sufferers quietly asleep in snowy beds, in a great airy room, with a blazing log-fire on the hearth, she drew a long breath, and said to the doctor: "This is the most awful day I ever lived through." Dr. Eben smiled. "You have had a life singularly free from troubles, Miss Gunn."