ove with me."

Dr. Eben was on the point of persisting farther; but he suddenly thought
to himself:

"I'd better not: I might make her angry. I'll take the friendship
platform for the present: that is some gain."

"You will permit me then to be your friend, Miss Gunn," he said. "Why,
certainly," said Hetty, in a matter-of-fact way: "I thought we were very
good friends now."

"But you recollect, you distinctly told me I was to come only as
physician to Mrs. Little," retorted the doctor.

Hetty colored: the darkness sheltered her.

"Oh! that was a long time ago," she said in a remorseful tone: "I should
be very ungrateful if I had not forgotten that."

And with this Dr. Eben was forced to be contented. When he thought the
whole thing over, he admitted to himself that he had fared as well as
he had a right to expect, and that he had gained a very sure vantage,
in having committed the loyal Hetty to the assertion that they were
friends. He half dreaded to see her the next morning, lest there should
be some change, same constraint in her manner; not a shade of it. He
could have almost doubted his own recollections of the evening before,
if such a thing had been possible, so absolutely unaltered was Hetty's
treatment of him. She had been absolutely honest in all she said: she
did honestly believe that his fancied love for her was a sentimental
mistake, a caprice born of idleness and lack of occupation, and she did
honestly intend to forget the whole thing, and to make him forget it.
And so they went back to the farm, where the summer awaited them with
overflowing harvests of every thing, and Hetty's hands were so full that
very soon she had almost ceased to recollect the life at "The Runs."
Sally and the baby were strong and well. The whole family seemed newly
glad and full of life. All odd hours they could snatch from work, Old
Caesar and Nan roamed about in the sun, following the baby, as his nurse
carried him in her arms. He had been christened Abraham Gunn Little;
poor James Little having persistently refused to let his own name be
given to the child, and Hetty having been cordially willing to give her
father's. To speak to a baby as Abraham was manifestly impossible, and
the little fellow was called simply "Baby" month after month, until,
one day, one of Norah's toddlers, who could not speak plain, hit upon a
nickname so fortunate that it was at once adopted by everybody.
"Raby," little Mike called him, by some o