or Bowdler, had sent her down to board in one of the
farm-houses. "The sea-air will do her good, physically," he said in a
note to his old chum, with whom he always had kept up a lingering
intercourse; "she's been over-worked lately,--sick soldiers, you know.
Mary went into the war _con amore_, like all women, or other happy
people who are blind of one eye. Besides, she is to be married about
Christmas, and before she begins life in earnest it would do her good to
face something real. Nothing like living by the sea, and with those
homely, thorough-blood Quakers, for bringing people to their simple,
natural selves. By the way, you have heard of Dr. Birkenshead, whom she
marries? though he is a surgeon,--not exactly in your profession. A
surprisingly young man to have gained his reputation. I'm glad Mary
marries a man of so much mark; she has pulled alone so long, she needs a
master." So MacAulay had taken pains to drive the young lady out, as
to-day, and took a general fatherly sort of charge of her, for his old
friend's sake.

Doctor Bowdler had frankly told his niece his reasons for wishing her to
go down to the sea-shore. They nettled her more than she chose to show.
She was over thirty, an eager humanitarian, had taught the freedmen at
Port Royal, gone to Gettysburg and Antietam with sanitary
stores,--surely, she did not need to be told that she had yet to begin
life in earnest! But she was not sorry for the chance to rest and think.
After she married she would be taken from the quiet Quaker society in
Philadelphia, in which she always had moved, to one that would put her
personal and mental powers to a sharp proof; for Birkenshead, by right
of his professional fame, and a curiously attractive personal
eccentricity, had gradually become the nucleus of one of the best and
most brilliant circles in the country, men and women alike distinguished
for their wit and skill in extracting the finest tones from life while
they lived. The quiet Quaker girl was secretly on her mettle,--secretly,
too, a little afraid. The truth was, she knew Doctor Birkenshead only in
the glare of public life; her love for him was, as yet, only a delicate
intellectual appreciation that gave her a keen delight. She was anxious
that in his own world he should not be ashamed of her. She was glad he
was to share this breathing-space with her; they could see each other
unmasked. Doctor Bowdler and he were coming down from New York on Ben
Van Note's lu