ys thought her a poor, flimsy
little thing. But that ought n't to make any difference, if she was in
trouble."

"No," Mrs. Breen conceded, and in compensation Grace admitted something
more on her side: "She's worse than she used to be,--sillier. I don't
suppose she has a wrong thought; but she's as light as foam."

"Oh, it is n't the wicked people who, do the harm," said Mrs. Green.

"I was sure that this air would be everything for her; and so it would,
with any ordinary case. But a child would take better care of itself. I
have to watch her every minute, like a child; and I never know what she
will do next."

"Yes; it's a burden," said Mrs. Breen, with a sympathy which she had
not expressed before. "And you're a good girl, Grace," she added in very
unwonted recognition.

The grateful tears stole into the daughter's eyes, but she kept a firm
face, even after they began to follow one another down her cheeks. "And
if Louise had n't come, you know, mother, that I was anxious to have
some older person with me when I went to Fall River. I was glad to have
this respite; it gives me a chance to think. I felt a little timid about
beginning alone."

"A man would n't," Mrs. Breen remarked.

"No. I am not a man. I have accepted that; with all the rest. I don't
rebel against being a woman. If I had been a man, I should n't have
studied medicine. You know that. I wished to be a physician because I
was a woman, and because--because--I had failed where--other women's
hopes are." She said it out firmly, and her mother softened to her in
proportion to the girl's own strength. "I might have been just a nurse.
You know I should have been willing to be that, but I thought I could be
something more. But it's no use talking." She added, after an interval,
in which her mother rocked to and fro with a gentle motion that searched
the joints of her chair, and brought out its most plaintive squeak
in pathetic iteration, and watched Grace, as she sat looking seaward
through the open window, "I think it's rather hard, mother, that you
should be always talking as if I wished to take my calling mannishly.
All that I intend is not to take it womanishly; but as for not being a
woman about it, or about anything, that's simply impossible. A woman is
reminded of her insufficiency to herself every hour of the day. And it's
always a man that comes to her help. I dropped some things out of my lap
down there, and by the time I had gathered them up I