As she got stronger and able to study more, she was inclined to rebel at the time spent over lessons, and said she did not see why, as she was going to be a nurse, she should learn languages and music. But she was told that a nice Christian nurse should learn everything she had time for; she might some day have French or German patients, and music would be a pleasure to everybody; it would not do to be one-sided, for she ought to be able to care for the minds and souls of her patients as well as for their bodies. So she was persuaded to study gladly, and would often wonder how the thing she was learning would come in afterwards. Later she found that there was not a single thing she had learnt which had not in some way been hallowed in the service of God. She used to say to others, “Never feel that it is waste of time to get knowledge of any kind; you can never tell how handy it may come in.” Dora grew up to be a very handsome woman. By the time she was twenty, all her delicacy had disappeared and she was tall and strong. She had very high spirits and was always full of fun and ready to see the funny side of people and things. Her laughter and her happy voice, singing as she went about the house, were the delight of her father, who called her his sunshine. But though she loved her home and her rides and walks on the moors, she did not find there enough occupation for her active nature. Her mother died after a long time of ill-health, during which Dora had been one of her devoted nurses, and now Dora longed for some real work. Her father did not wish her to leave home, but he did not forbid it, and at last when she was twenty-nine, Dora went to be schoolmistress at Woolston, a little village in Buckinghamshire. She lived there alone in a tiny cottage, loving the children who came to her school, and making herself the friend of all the poor and sick in the village. She did not feel, however, that this was her real work; and after three years she decided to join the Sisterhood of the Good Samaritans. She had learnt to know these Sisters in Yorkshire, as they had their chief home at Coatham, which was not very far from her old home. The Sisters had a Convalescent Home under their care, and many of them went out from Coatham to work in other towns.