Her father had been a country doctor with a large practice among patients who could not afford to pay. From the standpoint of humanity his conduct was admirable; regarded from the domestic hearthstone perhaps it was a little less. The practitioner who neglected the wife of the Mayor in order to attend a villager, because the villager's condition was more critical, offered small promise of leaving his child provided for, and before Mary was sixteen the problems of the rent and butcher's book were as familiar to her as the surgery itself. The exemplary doctor and unpractical parent struggled along more or less placidly by means of the girl's surveillance. Had he survived her, it is difficult to determine what would have become of him; but, dying first, he had her protection to the end. She found herself after the funeral with a crop of bills, some shabby furniture, and the necessity for earning a living. The furniture and the bills were easy to dispose of; they represented a sum in division with nothing over. The problem was, what was she fitted to do? She knew none of those things which used to be called "accomplishments," and which are to-day the elements of education. Her French was the French of "Le Petit Précepteur"; in German she was still bewildered by the article. And, a graver drawback, since the selling-price of education is an outrage on its cost--she had not been brought up to any trade. She belonged, in fact, and circumstances had caused her to discover it, to the ranks of refined incompetence: the incompetence that will not live by menial labour, because it is refined; the refinement that cannot support itself by any brain work, because it is incompetent. It was suggested that she might possibly enter the hospital of a neighbouring town and try to qualify for a nurse. She said, "Very well." By-and-by she was told that she could be admitted to the hospital, and that if she proved herself capable, that would be the end of her troubles. She said "Very well" again--and this time, "thank you." She had a good constitution, and she saw that if she failed here she might starve at her leisure before any further efforts were put forth on her behalf; so she gave satisfaction in her probation, and became at last a nurse like the others, composed and reliable. When that stage arrived, she owned to having fainted and suppressed the fact, after an early experience of the operating-room; her reputation was established, and it didn't matter now. The surgeon smiled.