giving too strong doses to such a sufferer, and too light ones to the
friends who insist there is nothing the matter with them. I wouldn't
give much for a doctor who can't see for himself in most cases, but
not always,--not always."

The doctor was in such a hospitable frame of mind that nobody could
have helped telling him anything, and happily he made an excellent
introduction for Nan's secret by inquiring how she had got on with her
studies, but she directed his attention to the wet plants in the
bottom of the carriage, which were complimented before she said, a
minute afterward, "Oh, I wonder if I shall make a mistake? I was
afraid you would laugh at me, and think it was all nonsense."

"Dear me, no," replied the doctor. "You will be the successor of Mrs.
Martin Dyer, and the admiration of the neighborhood;" but changing his
tone quickly, he said: "I am going to teach you all I can, just as
long as you have any wish to learn. It has not done you a bit of harm
to know something about medicine, and I believe in your studying it
more than you do yourself. I have always thought about it. But you are
very young; there's plenty of time, and I don't mean to be hurried;
you must remember that,--though I see your fitness and peculiar
adaptability a great deal better than you can these twenty years yet.
You will be growing happier these next few years at any rate, however
impossible life has seemed to you lately."

"I suppose there will be a great many obstacles," reflected Nan, with
an absence of her usual spirit.

"Obstacles! Yes," answered Dr. Leslie, vigorously. "Of course there
will be; it is climbing a long hill to try to study medicine or to
study anything else. And if you are going to fear obstacles you will
have a poor chance at success. There are just as many reasons as you
will stop to count up why you should not do your plain duty, but if
you are going to make anything of yourself you must go straight ahead,
taking it for granted that there will be opposition enough, but doing
what is right all the same. I suppose I have repeated to you fifty
times what old Friend Meadows told me years ago; he was a great
success at money-making, and once I asked him to give me some advice
about a piece of property. 'Friend Leslie,' says he, 'thy own opinion
is the best for thee; if thee asks ten people what to do, they will
tell thee ten things, and then thee doesn't know as much as when thee
set out,'" and Dr. Leslie, growin