longer. Perhaps in time it would be a
little less intolerable. Perhaps people always found it hard at first to
adapt themselves fully to their professions. It was even within the
limits of human possibility that, if she kept on long enough, she might
come to the point of delighting in clinics, like Miss Caldwell who was
fat and wore spectacles with tin bows and a cameo breastpin. Then she
hunted up a dry spot in her pillow, and dreamed of The Savins, and Mac,
and Quantuck, and waked up, and went to sleep again, and dreamed of
hearing her father saying in the next room,--

"Poor Babe! I don't think she was ever meant to be a good doctor; but I
don't see what on earth she really is good for, anyway."

The next afternoon, there were neither lectures nor clinics, and Phebe
determined to go for a long walk. It was early November, and the hush and
the haze of Indian summer lay over the park, as she halted on the bridge
and stood looking down into the river beneath. Not a soul was in sight.
The noises of the city were hushed in the distance, and before her the
broad reaches of the park stretched out and out under their mighty forest
trees. In a way, the rolling slopes, the broad lawns and the trees
reminded her of The Savins. She could imagine just how it looked at home,
the green lawn heaped here and there with brown oak leaves, the golden
glory of the hickories, the masses of late chrysanthemums, red and white
and pink and yellow, filling every sheltered nook and corner, above it
all, the soft November haze which is neither rosy nor purple nor gold,
but blended from them all, yet quieter far than any one of them.

All of a sudden Phebe's head went down upon her arms folded on the
rail of the bridge and, secure in her solitude, she gave herself up
to her woe.

"Miss McAlister?"

She started and pulled herself together abruptly.

"Are you in trouble?"

The voice was unknown, yet familiar, and she spun around to find herself
face to face with Gifford Barrett.

"Where did you come from?" she asked, too much astonished at his
appearing, too glad to look into a friendly pair of eyes to resent the
sympathy written on his face.

"I came over here, for a few days, and I took the liberty of calling on
you. The people at the house told me you had spoken of coming out here,
so I came on the chance of finding you. But was something--?" He
hesitated.

Phebe rubbed away her tears.

"Yes, something was," she answered, with an