the simple duties which life seemed offering her with heartless irony.
She was not good for anything after all, it appeared, and she had been
cheating herself. This was no life at all, this fretful idleness; if
only she had been trained as boys are, to the work of their lives! She
had hoped that Dr. Leslie would help her; he used to talk long ago
about her studying medicine, but he must have forgotten that, and the
girl savagely rebuked society in general for her unhappiness. Of
course she could keep the house, but it was kept already; any one with
five senses and good health like hers could prove herself able to do
any of the ordinary work of existence. For her part it was not enough
to be waited upon and made comfortable, she wanted something more, to
be really of use in the world, and to do work which the world needed.

Where the main road turned eastward up the hills, a footpath, already
familiar to the reader, shortened the distance to the farm, and the
young girl quickly crossed the rude stile and disappeared among the
underbrush, walking bareheaded with the swift steps of a creature
whose home was in some such place as this. Often the dry twigs, fallen
from the gray lower branches of the pines, crackled and snapped under
her feet, or the bushes rustled backed again to their places after she
pushed against them in passing; she hurried faster and faster, going
first through the dense woods and then out into the sunlight. Once or
twice in the open ground she stopped and knelt quickly on the soft
turf or moss to look at a little plant, while the birds which she
startled came back to their places directly, as if they had been quick
to feel that this was a friend and not an enemy, though disguised in
human shape. At last Nan reached the moss-grown fence of the farm and
leaped over it, and fairly ran to the river-shore, where she went
straight to one of the low-growing cedars, and threw herself upon it
as if it were a couch. While she sat there, breathing fast and glowing