the guffaw."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, looking up with bright sweetness, "I think I could
bear it if I heard Tom's voice in the chorus. He used to have rather a
foolish, nervous laugh, for so sensible and brave a man. But I am sure I
should not think it foolish, or anything save delightful, if I heard it
again."

CHAPTER XXIII.

SECOND THOUGHTS AND LAST WORDS.

Dr. and Mrs. Millar could make no objection to Dr. Harry Ironside as a
suitor for their daughter. It was all the other way. They were highly
satisfied with the young man's antecedents and credentials, and yet Dr.
Millar was a good deal taken aback. He had grown to look on nursing as a
career for Annie, and to take pride in her excellence in it, as he would
have done had she been his son and a young doctor. He could not help
feeling as if marriage interfered a little with his views for her. He
had to recall that Ironside was a very fine young fellow, with a
commendable spirit of inquiry in medical matters. He would do credit to
his profession, and Annie, especially if she went with him to a new
colony, might work in his company, and be his right hand.

Mrs. Millar had too much good sense and womanly experience to approve of
long engagements, and she did not like the chance of Annie's going to
Africa--still she would fulfil what Mrs. Millar considered the highest
and happiest destiny for a woman, that of becoming the wife of a worthy
man. As to Africa, the little Doctor, a fixture in his chair, told her,
"My dear Maria, we shall simply be giving hostages to Providence, for
man was told to occupy the earth, and carry civilization and redemption
to its utmost bounds."

To spare Annie's feelings, her relations kept her engagement and their
laughter well in the background, while Dr. Harry Ironside, having probed
the Russian fever to the bottom, and seen nearly the last of it,
returned in triumph to London, to make arrangements for his medical
mission.

As for Annie, in her eagerness to escape from the rallying she had
provoked, she talked incessantly about going back to St. Ebbe's, where,
however, she was not yet due. A longer leave of absence had been granted
to her, in consideration of the fact that her holiday had been mainly
spent in hard work in the impromptu hospital at Redcross. She would not
have accepted the additional grant apart from the circumstance that
Harry Ironside was in London. Annie admitted to herself, in the secret
recesses of her hea