face into a bewitching expression of profound meditation.

"I can't teach, and I can't sew, and I can't cook. I couldn't bear
sitting still all day at a typewriter, and there's no room in the
telephone office. You know quite well that there aint a thing for girls
like me to do but to get married. That's why God made us pretty, so's
we'd have a good chance."

"Don't be flippant, miss. How do you think you'd like to be an hospital
nurse?"

"I dunno; I wouldn't mind trying. I'm generally good to folks--when
they're sick--and I aint a bit scared of dirty nor of dead ones. I laid
out an old woman that died in the Refuge."

"You're not particularly thin-skinned, that's a fact; but it's the
educational qualification I'd be afraid of. There's some sort of an
examination to be passed before you can get into any of these Training
Schools nowadays. I'll write for some forms of application, and we'll
see. If once you were able to support yourself, you'd think very
differently about marrying anybody that turned up, just for the sake of
a home. Ours mayn't be much of a one for you, but marry to get out of
it, and you'll perhaps find yourself out of the frying-pan into the
fire."

"I think it would be just lovely to be a nurse! There was one came down
from Chicago when Mrs. Wade was sick, and the uniform was awfully
pretty. I'm sure it would suit me."

"It would be very becoming, I haven't any doubt of that; and when it's
all settled that you are going to an hospital you can write in reply to
Will Axworthy's last letter."

"He wanted me to keep on writing to him just the same; said he'd like
always to be good friends with me."

"I wouldn't write him but once again, and do it all by yourself. Just
say that the reason you wrote the other letter, asking how you stood
with him, was that you had been thinking of leaving us altogether, but
before taking the decided step of entering an hospital, you had thought
it only fair to him to give him the chance to object, if he really had
the objections he had led you to take for granted."

We heard a shouting and a blowing of tin horns upon the beach at this
juncture. I took the oars and pulled in, seeing Belle and the boys
waving their hats in the bright moonlight. My wife's face expressed the
blankest astonishment when she saw who was my shipmate.

"We thought you must have fallen asleep out there. Didn't know you had
company!"

Mary was still in the black books when I came down th