influences, and debasing effects, just as truly as riches have. See how
it narrows our usefulness. Not always, it is true. Sometimes our best
usefulness keeps us poor. That's poverty with a good excuse. But that's
not poverty satisfying, Mary"--

"No, of course not," said Mary, exhibiting a degree of distress that the
Doctor somehow overlooked.

"It's merely," said he, half-extending his open palm,--"it's merely
poverty accepted, as a good soldier accepts the dust and smut that are a
necessary part of the battle. Now, here's this little girl."--As his
open white hand pointed toward Alice she shrank back; but the Doctor
seemed blind this afternoon and drove on.--"In a few years--it will not
seem like any time at all--she'll be half grown up; she'll have wants
that ought to be supplied."

"Oh! don't," exclaimed Mary, and burst into a flood of tears; and the
Doctor, while she hid them from her child, sat silently loathing his own
stupidity.

"Please, don't mind it," said Mary, stanching the flow. "You were not so
badly mistaken. I wasn't satisfied, but I was about to surrender." She
smiled at herself and her warlike figure of speech.

He looked away, passed his hand across his forehead and must have
muttered audibly his self-reproach: for Mary looked up again with a
faint gleam of the old radiance in her face, saying:--

"I'm glad you didn't let me do it. I'll not do it. I'll take up the
struggle again. Indeed, I had already thought of one thing I could do,
but I--I--in fact, Doctor, I thought you might not like it."

"What was it?"

"It was teaching in the public schools. They're in the hands of the
military government, I am told. Are they not?"

"Yes."

"Still," said Mary, speaking rapidly, "I say I'll keep up the"--

But the Doctor lifted his hand.

"No, no. There's to be no more struggle."

"No?" Mary tried to look pleasantly incredulous.

"No; and you're not going to be put upon anybody's bounty, either. No.
What I was going to say about this little girl here was this,--her name
is Alice, is it?"

"Yes."

The mother dropped an arm around the child, and both she and Alice
looked timidly at the questioner.

"Well, by that name, Mary, I claim the care of her."

The color mounted to Mary's brows, but the Doctor raised a finger.

"I mean, of course, Mary, only in so far as such care can go without
molesting your perfect motherhood, and all its offices and pleasures."

Her eyes filled again, and h