er lips parted; but the Doctor was not going
to let her reply.

"Don't try to debate it, Mary. You must see you have no case. Nobody's
going to take her from you, nor do any other of the foolish things, I
hope, that are so often done in such cases. But you've called her
Alice, and Alice she must be. I don't propose to take care of her for
you"--

"Oh, no; of course not," interjected Mary.

"No," said the Doctor; "you'll take care of her for me. I intended it
from the first. And that brings up another point. You mustn't teach
school. No. I have something else--something better--to suggest. Mary,
you and John have been a kind of blessing to me"--

She would have interrupted with expressions of astonishment and dissent,
but he would not hear them.

"I think I ought to know best about that," he said. "Your husband taught
me a great deal, I think. I want to put some of it into practice. We had
a--an understanding, you might say--one day toward the--end--that I
should do for him some of the things he had so longed and hoped to
do--for the poor and the unfortunate."

"I know," said Mary, the tears dropping down her face.

"He told you?" asked the Doctor.

She nodded.

"Well," resumed the Doctor, "those may not be his words precisely, but
it's what they meant to me. And I said I'd do it. But I shall need
assistance. I'm a medical practitioner. I attend the sick. But I see a
great deal of other sorts of sufferers; and I can't stop for them."

"Certainly not," said Mary, softly.

"No," said he; "I can't make the inquiries and investigations about them
and study them, and all that kind of thing, as one should if one's help
is going to be help. I can't turn aside for all that. A man must have
one direction, you know. But you could look after those things"--

"I?"

"Certainly. You could do it just as I--just as John--would wish to see
it done. You're just the kind of person to do it right."

"O Doctor, don't say so! I'm not fitted for it at all."

"I'm sure you are, Mary. You're fitted by character and outward
disposition, and by experience. You're full of cheer"--

She tearfully shook her head. But he insisted.

"You will be--for _his_ sake, as you once said to me. Don't you
remember?"

She remembered. She recalled all he wished her to: the prayer she had
made that, whenever death should part her husband and her, he might not
be the one left behind. Yes, she remembered; and the Doctor spoke
again:--

"Now,