er eyes and a curl of her lips, in the midst of her
earnestness, "is the shortest and safest road to growing well-to-do
within the briefest space of time, you had better adopt the latter
alternative. If I had been a man and a doctor, I should have tried the
former."

"That is enough," he said with conviction.

"But what will your sister say?" she hastened to inquire, in order to
turn the conversation from ominous personalities.

"Oh! it will be a blow to poor little Kate," he owned regretfully,
"because she is too young to go out with me at once, and set about
keeping house for me as she has always proposed--a rough, primitive
style of housekeeping it will be out there for many a day. But she is
not without pluck, and she is as true as steel, though I say it. She
must learn some of your fearlessness and faith, and make the best of
things. She must go to one of our aunts in the meantime, and when
matters are smoother and easier, and the fate of the colony is decided,
perhaps she may join me. I do not believe that there is any danger to
speak of from the native tribes, only it will not be drawing-room work
for some time to come. You see it is not the same with a girl like Kate
as it would be with a woman like you," he had the boldness to insinuate.
"You would be a tower of strength in yourself from the beginning; you
might be the making of a newly-founded hospital."

"Poor Kate!" said Annie, hastily apostrophizing the girl she had been
said to ignore, and speaking in accents of far deeper pity than she had
any idea of.

"And what do you say?" he turned upon her.

"I?" she cried in much confusion. "I have said my say."

"No," he answered; "unless you mean to send me away to the ends of the
earth without a shred of hope. You cannot do that."

"I think you are taking advantage of me," she protested, but quite
meekly and diffidently for Annie. "I have never been even civil to you
till Tom Robinson was in danger, and then I had to put all my private
feelings aside on his account. Before that I was more than rude."

"And you are a little sorry now? Confess it, Annie, when I am going off
all alone, so far as old friends are concerned, to Central Africa, at
your bidding."

"Not at my bidding," she declared hastily; "it is too bad of you to say
so."

"And you are going to be far kinder in the end than in the beginning,"
he persisted. "You are going to say, 'Harry Ironside, if you ever come
back, whether it is to stay