Boston or to New York, and was pleased at his hearty
welcome back to the medical meetings he had hardly entered during so
many years. He missed not a few old friends, but he quickly made new
ones. He was vastly pleased when the younger men seemed glad to hear
him speak, and it was often proved that either through study or
experience he had caught at some fresh knowledge of which his
associates were still ignorant. He had laughingly accused himself of
being a rusty country doctor and old fogy who had not kept up with the
times; but many a letter followed him home, with thanks for some
helpful suggestion or advice as to the management of a troublesome
case. He was too far away to give room for any danger of professional
jealousy, or for the infringement of that ever lengthening code of
etiquette so important to the sensitive medical mind. Therefore he
had only much pleasure and a fine tribute of recognition and honor,
and he smiled more than once as he sat in the quiet Oldfields study
before the fire, and looked up at Captain Finch's little ship, and
told Nan of his town experiences, not always omitting, though
attempting to deprecate, the compliments, in some half-hour when they
were on peculiarly good terms with each other. And Nan believed there
could be no better doctor in the world, and stoutly told him so, and
yet listened only half-convinced when he said that he had a great mind
to go to town and open an office, and make a specialty of treating
diseases of the heart, since everybody had a specialty nowadays. He
never felt so ready for practice as now, but Nan somehow could not
bear the thought of his being anywhere but in his home. For herself,
she would have been ready to venture anything if it would further her
ever-growing purpose; but that Dr. Leslie should begin a new career or
contest with the world seemed impossible. He was not so strong as he
used to be, and he was already famous among his fellows. She would
help him with his work by and by even more than now, and her own
chosen calling of a country doctor was the dearer to her, because he
had followed it so gallantly before her loving and admiring eyes. But
Dr. Leslie built many a castle in the air, with himself and a great
city practice for tenants, and said that it would be a capital thing
for Nan; she could go on with it alone by and by. It was astonishing
how little some of the city doctors knew: they relied upon each other
too much; they should all be