nt had
been offered the heroine of this story in the city hospitals. She
would have little trouble in making her way since she had the
requisite qualities, natural and acquired, which secure success. But
she decided for herself that she would neither do this, nor carry out
yet the other plan of going on with her studies at some school across
the sea. Zurich held out a great temptation, but there was time enough
yet, and she would spend a year in Oldfields with the doctor, studying
again with him, since she knew better than ever before that she could
find no wiser teacher. And it was a great pleasure to belong to the
dear old town, to come home to it with her new treasures, so much
richer than she had gone away that beside medicines and bandages and
lessons in general hygiene for the physical ails of her patients, she
could often be a tonic to the mind and soul; and since she was trying
to be good, go about doing good in Christ's name to the halt and
maimed and blind in spiritual things.

Nobody sees people as they are and finds the chance to help poor
humanity as a doctor does. The decorations and deceptions of character
must fall away before the great realities of pain and death. The
secrets of many hearts and homes must be told to this confessor, and
sadder ailments than the text-books name are brought to be healed by
the beloved physicians. Teachers of truth and givers of the laws of
life, priests and ministers,--all these professions are joined in one
with the gift of healing, and are each part of the charge that a good
doctor holds in his keeping.

One day in the beginning of her year at Oldfields, Nan, who had been
very busy, suddenly thought it would be well to give herself a
holiday; and with a sudden return of her old sense of freedom was
going out at the door and down toward the gateway, which opened to a
pleasantly wide world beyond. Marilla had taken Nan's successes rather
reluctantly, and never hesitated to say that she only hoped to see her
well married and settled before she died; though she was always ready
to defend her course with even virulence to those who would deprecate
it. She now heard Nan shut the door, and called at once from an upper
window to know if word had been left where she was going, and the
young practitioner laughed aloud as she answered, and properly
acknowledged the fetter of her calling.

The leaves were just beginning to fall, and she pushed them about with
her feet, and som