I invite you to make this your principal business. I'll pay you
for it, regularly and well, what I think it's worth; and it's worth no
trifle. There's not one in a thousand that I'd trust to do it, woman
or man; but I know you will do it all, and do it well, without any
nonsense. And if you want to look at it so, Mary, you can just consider
that it's John doing it, all the time; for, in fact, that's just what it
is. It beats sewing, Mary, or teaching school, or making preserves, I
think."

"Yes," said Mary, looking down on Alice, and stroking her head.

"You can stay right here where you are, with Madame Zenobie, as you had
planned; but you'll give yourself to this better work. I'll give you a
_carte blanche_. Only one mistake I charge you not to make; don't go and
come from day to day on the assumption that only the poor are poor, and
need counsel and attention."

"I know that would be a mistake," said Mary.

"But I mean more than that," continued the Doctor. "You must keep a
hold on the rich and comfortable and happy. You want to be a medium
between the two, identified with both as completely as possible. It's a
hard task, Mary. It will take all your cunning."

"And more, too," replied she, half-musing.

"You know," said the Doctor, "I'm not to appear in the matter, of
course; I'm not to be mentioned: that must be one of the conditions."

Mary smiled at him through her welling eyes.

"I'm not fit to do it," she said, folding the wet spots of her
handkerchief under. "But still, I'd rather not refuse. If I might try
it, I'd like to do so. If I could do it well, it would be a finer
monument--to _him_"--

"Than brass or marble," said Dr. Sevier. "Yes, more to his liking."

"Well," said Mary again, "if you think I can do it I'll try it."

"Very well. There's one place you can go to, to begin with, to-morrow
morning, if you choose. I'll give you the number. It's just across here
in Casa Calvo street."

"Narcisse's aunt?" asked Mary, with a soft gleam of amusement.

"Yes. Have you been there already?"

She had; but she only said:--

"There's one thing that I'm afraid will go against me, Doctor, almost
everywhere." She lifted a timid look.

The Doctor looked at her inquiringly, and in his private thought said
that it was certainly not her face or voice.

"Ah!" he said, as he suddenly recollected. "Yes; I had forgotten. You
mean your being a Union woman."

"Yes. It seems to me they'll be sure to find it