Dr. Morse, in his office, thrust his hands down into his pockets, and stretched his feet out, and reflected. “I suppose she thinks I’m a brute. I might have known better than to talk to a sentimental girl as though she were a rational being. She’ll keep that creature alive long enough to bring two or three fellows down to the gutter, and, possibly, even continue her physical and moral characteristics in a child (though that’s not likely, thank heaven), and then feel that she’s done _her_ duty! Good Lord, the harm these philanthropists do!” Nevertheless he softened a little when a short and formal note came from Miss Wharton, with a small sum of money for “the case of which he had spoken.” “She’s got a good heart, that girl,” he told himself. “Her ten dollars won’t do much, though; and to think of that little squalid Nellie Sherman having a hundred spent to keep her worthless body alive!” V So Nellie’s summer outing was arranged: she was to have four months in a quiet place in the country; plenty of fresh air, and good milk, and wholesome food. No wonder the little pale cheeks grew round and faintly pink; that her eyes seemed darker and brighter; her pinched, white lips fuller and redder. In a month it was evident that the quiet life which Sara had taken such pains to find was good for her; her whole miserable, sickly body began to thrive. It was a “quiet” life. From the girl’s point of view it was perfectly intolerable. She endured, in her way, the misery of the intellectual man or woman cut off absolutely from books or study of any kind, or of a clean person obliged to live in filth. The contrast was as great. The fact that it was in favor of righteousness did not make it any the less painful. Nellie’s sudden removal from the cheap and base excitements of her life caused absolute suffering. Such suffering, untempted reformers argue, is good for the soul.