ouse, Dr.
Eben bowed again as ceremoniously as before, sprang up the piazza steps,
and ran up the staircase, two steps at a time, to Sally's room. Hetty
stood still in the doorway: she felt herself discomfited. She was half
angry, half amused. She did not like what the doctor had said; but she
admitted to herself that it was precisely what she would have said in
his place.

"I don't blame him," she thought, "I don't blame him a bit; but, it is
horridly disagreeable. I don't see how we're ever to get on; and it is
so provoking, for, if he were anybody else, we'd be real good friends.
He isn't in the least what I thought he was. I hope he won't come over
before tea. It would be awkward enough. But then, he's got to take all
his meals with us at 'The Runs.' Oh, dear!" and Hetty went about her
preparations for the journey, with feelings by no means of unalloyed
pleasure.

No danger of Dr. Eben's coming before tea. It was very late when he
appeared, valise in hand, and said in a formal tone to Hetty, who met
him at the door, in fact had been nervously watching for him for four
whole hours:

"I am very sorry to see you still up, Miss Gunn. I ought to have
recollected to tell you that I should not be here until late: I have
been saying good-by to my patients. Will you have the kindness to let
me be shown to my room?" and like a very courteous traveller, awaiting a
landlady's pleasure, he stood at foot of the stairs.

With some confusion of manner, and in a constrained tone, unlike her
usual cheery voice, Hetty replied:

"The next door to Sally's, doctor." She wished to say something more,
but she could not think of a word.

"What a fool I am!" she mentally ejaculated, as the doctor, with a hasty
"good-night," entered his room. "What a fool I am to let him make me so
uncomfortable. I don't see what it is. I wish I hadn't asked him to go."

"That woman's a jewel!" the doctor was saying to himself the other side
of the door: "she is as honest as a man could be. I didn't know there
could be any thing so honest in shape of a woman under fifty: she
doesn't look a day over twenty-five; but, they say she's nearly forty;
it's the strangest thing in life she's never married. I'll wager any
thing, she's wishing this minute I was in Guinea; but she'll put it
through bravely for sake of Sally, as she calls her, and I'll keep out
of her way all I can. If it weren't for the confounded notion she's
taken up against me, I'd like to kn