u will be
able to enjoy happiness. As far as I am concerned I don't suppose it can
make me feel any worse."

"You're a dear good boy, John," she answered. "We shall always be awfully
good friends, and perhaps, some day ... Now you must tell me all your
plans."

"Ladies first," I objected.

"Well, my heart is still in Newfoundland, you know. But I'm going to stay
at least a year in New York. I'm going to work among the poorest and most
unpleasant, because I want to become self-reliant. Then I shall go back
home. Think of a trained nurse let loose in some of those outports! I
should just revel in it. I am an heiress worth five hundred dollars a
year of my own. That would keep a lot of people up there. You see, I have
a theory!"

"Will you be so kind as to share it with me?" I asked.

"Well, ordinary nursing is a humdrum thing" and there are thousands to do
it. It is the same thing with you. Just now, having no practice as
yet, you are working in laboratories with a lot of others; you run around
hospitals--also with a crowd. What do you know about your ability to go
right out and do a man's work, by yourself? That is what counts, to my
mind."

"I see the point," I informed her, "and you expect surely to return to
the land of codfish."

"Yes," she nodded, "and now what about you?"

"Oh, I am going there next week," I replied. She opened her eyes very
wide, vaguely scenting some sort of joke, but in this she erred.

"I see no use in remaining here," I said, with a determination as strong
as it was recent. "It would take me a long time to put myself on the
level of men like Taurus, and I don't want a lot of nurses falling in
love with me; I only asked for one. You are going back after a time. Very
well, I'm going now, and I'll wait for you. I can easily find some place
where a doctor is badly needed. You will answer my letters, won't you?"

"I promise," she said, very gravely, "and it is a very good idea. One can
always do a man's work up there."

She ate a Nesselrode pudding while I enjoyed coffee and a cigar, to the
extent that I forgot to drink the one and allowed the other to go out
after a puff or two.

"Your money came from a good St. John's merchant who made it from the
people of the outports," she said. "You might spend a little on them now,
gracefully. They need it badly enough."

We remained silent for some time, thinking of the bleak coast of our big
island, where the price of our little dinner wou