som, or whatever else
people count magnificent compensations and rewards. But you must not
think that it is because I do not love you all as well and a thousand
times better than I ever loved you, for that would be a great mistake,
since I am just beginning to know your true value. But don't you
understand it would break my heart to think that I should no longer be a
nurse and never have such another experience as I have had this
afternoon." And then she told them in a very few words what had happened
and what the surgeon had said to her. How the sister of the ward, and
the matron, and everybody she knew in St. Ebbe's had congratulated her.
They had all united in promising that the poor little fellow should be
her patient in future; they had begun already to call him "Miss Millar's
boy."

The little Doctor not only wiped his spectacles, he held his head
higher. Mrs. Millar read the letter again and again, appropriating it
and carrying it in her pocket till it was worn to fragments. These were
still religiously preserved and portions read to select and sympathetic
audiences. And every time she read the lines herself with a full heart,
she called on God to bless her good Annie, and thought she was honoured
among mothers in having such a daughter.

As for Dora and May they were long of ceasing to talk with bated breath
and the height of loving enthusiasm of how Annie had mastered herself,
and what a stay she had been in the hour of need to the lad. They
planned and carried out their plans at every spare moment, in the
manufacture of knitted socks and cravats for his benefit. But their
great achievement was a quilted dressing-gown which Dora contrived to
cut out, and May, in spite of her bad sewing, to help to sew together,
that in his convalescence he might sit up in bed like a little sick
prince.

CHAPTER XI.

MRS. JENNINGS AND HER DAUGHTER HESTER.

Rose Millar had made up her mind to like everything, if possible, in her
new surroundings, and when she came up to town it was not only by a
piece of good fortune, it was to the girl's credit, that she found so
much she could appreciate, and so little, comparatively, that it was
difficult to put up with.

In the first place, and as of primary consequence to Rose's well-being,
Mrs. Jennings, the lady with whom Rose was boarded, turned out an
excellently-disposed gentlewoman. She had a well-ordered house, pervaded
with the spirit of a gentlewoman. The whole estab