the cliff when he first called in the
evening. But he said he would help me up again, and--he did, nicely. I
was n't exhausted a bit; and how I took more cold I can't understand; I
was wrapped up warmly. I think I took the cold when I was sitting there
after our game of croquet, with my shawl off. Don't you think so?" she
wheedled.

"Perhaps," said Grace.

"He did nothing but talk about you, Grace," said Mrs. Maynard, with a
sly look at the other. "He's awfully afraid of you, and he kept asking
about you."

"Louise," said the other, gravely ignoring these facts, "I never
undertook the care of you socially, and I object very much to lecturing
you. You are nearly as old as I am, and you have had a great deal more
experience of life than I have." Mrs. Maynard sighed deeply in assent.
"But it does n't seem to have taught you that if you will provoke people
to talk of you, you must expect criticism. One after another you've
told nearly every woman in the house your affairs, and they have all
sympathized with you and pitied you. I shall have to be plain, and tell
you that I can't have them sneering and laughing at any one who is my
guest. I can't let you defy public opinion here."

"Why, Grace," said Mrs. Maynard, buoyed above offence at her friend's
words by her consciousness of the point she was about to make, "you defy
public opinion yourself a good deal more than I do, every minute."

"I? How do I defy it?" demanded Grace indignantly.

"By being a doctor."

Grace opened her lips to speak, but she was not a ready person, and she
felt the thrust. Before she could say anything Mrs. Maynard went on:
"There isn't one of them that does n't think you're much more scandalous
than if you were the greatest flirt alive. But, I don't mind them, and
why should you?"

The serious girl whom she addressed was in that helpless subjection to
the truth in which so many New England women pass their lives. She could
not deny the truth which lurked in the exaggeration of these words, and
it unnerved her, as the fact that she was doing what the vast majority
of women considered unwomanly always unnerved her when she suffered
herself to think of it. "You are right, Louise," she said meekly and
sadly. "They think as well of you as they do of me."

"Yes, that's just what I said!" cried Mrs. Maynard, glad of her
successful argument.

But however disabled, her friend resumed: "The only safe way for you is
to take the ground that so lon