the first time I have been chief mourner. Poor souls! they don't dread
their troubles half so much as I do. He will have a good little farm
here in another year or two, it only needs draining to be excellent
land, and he knows that." The doctor turned and looked back over the
few acres with great pleasure. "Now we'll go and see about old Mrs.
Willet, though I don't believe there's any great need of it. She
belongs to one of two very bad classes of patients. It makes me so
angry to hear her cough twice as much as need be. In your practice,"
he continued soberly, "you must remember that there is danger of
giving too strong doses to such a sufferer, and too light ones to the
friends who insist there is nothing the matter with them. I wouldn't
give much for a doctor who can't see for himself in most cases, but
not always,--not always."

The doctor was in such a hospitable frame of mind that nobody could
have helped telling him anything, and happily he made an excellent
introduction for Nan's secret by inquiring how she had got on with her
studies, but she directed his attention to the wet plants in the
bottom of the carriage, which were complimented before she said, a
minute afterward, "Oh, I wonder if I shall make a mistake? I was
afraid you would laugh at me, and think it was all nonsense."

"Dear me, no," replied the doctor. "You will be the successor of Mrs.
Martin Dyer, and the admiration of the neighborhood;" but changing his
tone quickly, he said: "I am going to teach you all I can, just as
long as you have any wish to learn. It has not done you a bit of harm
to know something about medicine, and I believe in your studying it
more than you do yourself. I have always thought about it. But you are
very young; there's plenty of time, and I don't mean to be hurried;
you must remember that,--though I see your fitness and peculiar