They sat down on the black horsehair sofa and Mrs. Ware went on, her soft, southern tones full of pleading, one hand fluttering over the girl in little caressing touches: “If you knew them as I do, Rhoda, and knew how contented they are, you wouldn’t feel a moment’s hesitation. And everybody lives so happily down there! Such hospitality, such friendships, such enjoyment of life--everything so gracious and charming! There’s nothing like it in the North! How homesick it makes me, even yet, to think of it! Oh, honey! If I could only see you settled in the midst of it, you don’t know how happy it would make me! And Jeff--I don’t believe you realize, Rhoda, how much he loves you! You ought to have heard him talk to me about you! Jeff would do anything to make you happy!” Rhoda’s head dropped to her mother’s shoulder. “Oh, mother!” she cried, “I wish--I wish you could convince me!” When she carried her sewing down to the veranda a little later Mrs. Ware’s eyes followed her with a gaze of mingled longing and misgiving. “Now she will go and talk with her father,” was the mother’s thought, “and he will undo all that I’ve gained.” Rhoda saw that her father’s carriage was at the east gate, waiting for him, and she had scarcely seated herself with her sewing when he came out from his door. “Oh, Rhoda,” he called, “will you come here a minute, please? “I’d like you to do something for me this morning,” he went on as they stepped back into the office. “You know where the Mallard place is? The first one beyond Gilbertson’s. They have sent in for some more medicine for their sick child, but if there have been certain results I want to make a change in the treatment. The man who brought me the message didn’t know anything about it and I’ve got a hurry call that’s likely to keep me all day. I’ll give you two kinds of medicine,” and he began putting them up as he continued talking, “and if the child is sleeping well and has no fever you can leave this package--the directions are written here. But if not I want it to have this, until I go out there to-morrow. Don’t say anything about having the two kinds, but make your inquiries, and leave the package that the symptoms call for, and tell them I’ll call to-morrow.” “All right, father. I can ride Dolly, I suppose? I’ll enjoy having a gallop this morning.” “If she’d only been a boy,” he thought, as he hurried into the carriage and drove away, “I’d have made a doctor of her. It’s a pity she wasn’t--she’d make a first-class one, if she wasn’t a woman.” He held the thought regretfully for a moment. But, radical though he was upon many subjects, it did not occur to him that Rhoda could be a woman and a physician at the same time. As he drove down the main street, past the law office of Horace Hardaker, that young man rushed out and signaled him to stop. “If you’ve got anything to tell me, Horace,” he said, reining up at the sidewalk, “jump in and come along for a few blocks. I’m in a hurry and can’t stop.”