he easier to look forward to in my own case if I had done it for other
people, not merely because they were my own, just because they were
God's creatures, and He had set me, among other women, to do the
sorrowful work, and would lend me strength for the task."

"I believe it, Annie," said Dr. Millar firmly, as he looked at the
reverently bent head, and listened to the faltering yet faithful words.

Mrs. Millar said no more, though the poor lady still shivered, as she
looked at the girl in her brilliant youthful bloom. It was too terrible
to think of her associated with disease and death, she whom her father
and mother would have sheltered from every rough wind. Yet what was
pretty Annie in the ranks of humanity, in the march of history? The
frivolous product of a heathen world, the feminine counterpart of some

"Idle singer of an empty day"?

or--

"A creature breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller 'twixt life and death"--

a Christian girl who with all true Christians had the Lord Christ, who
went about doing good, for an everlasting example? And had there not all
along been something fine in Annie, under her superficial hardness and
inclination to conceal her feelings, something which her family had not
suspected, brought to light by their troubles? something of which
everybody connected with her would be prouder in all humility, with
reason, in the days to come, than they had ever been proud of her
supreme prettiness and lively tongue in times past.

"It is a pity about my age," went on Annie ingenuously, lamenting over
her deficiency in years as other people lament over their superfluity in
that respect, "but it is a fault which will mend every day. I have
found out that there are two hospitals which make twenty-three--just a
year older than I am--the age of admission for probationers, and there
is one hospital that admits them at twenty. Would not the fact of my
being a doctor's daughter go for something? Have you not interest,
father, if you care to exert it, to get the hospital authorities to
stretch a point where I am concerned? You might tell them that I am the
eldest of the family," drawing up her not very tall figure, "that I have
been treated as grown-up for years and years, and that I have several
younger sisters whom I have tried to keep in order." There was a
returning twinkle in Annie's brown eyes and a comical curve of her rosy
lips.

But she relapsed into extreme gravity the ne