. Mother dear, it is surely well that I had
not a hankering after idleness, after lying in bed half the forenoon, as
people say the Dyers do, getting up only to read the silliest and
fastest of novels, with secret aspirations after diamonds and a carriage
and pair, if not a coach and six. Of course I should not have been
contented with a one-horse shay, a mere doctor's pill-box, such as you
have put down, father, which Rose and May are determined to set up for
you again before they are many year's older."

"Good little chits!" exclaimed the little Doctor, blowing his nose
suspiciously. "Tell them, Annie, that I like walking above all things. I
find it a great improvement on driving. I have been troubled with--let
me see, oh! yes, cold feet--a deficiency in the circulation, not at all
uncommon when one gets up in years, and after walking a bit I feel my
toes all tingling and as warm as a toast."

"I should prefer nursing to any other mode of earning my living," said
Annie, keeping to her point. "I may be presumptuous, like the girls of
my day, as mother says, but I really think that I have a natural turn
for nursing, derived from you father, and grandfather, no doubt, which
might have made me also a good doctor supposing I had been a man, or
supposing I had sought from the first to be a medical woman and had been
educated accordingly. If I am wrong, you will set me right, won't you?"

In place of contradicting her, he simply nodded in acquiescence, while
he linked his hands across the small of his back.

"Mother, I do not think I should shrink from dressing wounds, if I only
knew the best thing to do to avoid danger and give relief. You remember
when Bella burnt her arm badly from the elbow to the wrist, I tied it up
to keep out the air, before father came in, and he said it was rightly
done, and would not change the dressing. And when poor Tim, who has lost
his place with the putting down of the brougham, gave his hand the
terrible hack with the axe in breaking wood for cook, I was able to stop
the loss of blood, and did not get in the least faint myself. Yes, I
know it would be very pitiful to see a human creature die whom we could
not save," she added, in a lower tone, "and very sad to prepare such a
one for the grave. But, dear mother, somebody has to do it at some time,
and I may be the somebody one day, anyhow I shall have to be indebted to
my neighbour to do the last charitable offices for me. It might be all
t