had taken root in Utica, and now that she was alone, with her baby to
support, she longed to come back to Boston, and asked my advice. Did I
think she could take up her old work?

I took the letter at once to the Matron of the Friendly Society--I
happened to be resting between two cases--and we decided that it was
safe. At least between us we could help her make the trial.

A few months later she came, and we went to the station to meet her. I
could not see that she had changed a bit. She did not look a day
older, and the bouncing baby she carried in her arms was a darling.

Of course she could not go back to the Association. That was not for
married women. But we found her a room just across the street, and in
no time, she dropped right back into the place she had left. Every
morning she took the baby boy to the _crêche_ and every night she took
him home, and a better cared-for, better loved, more wisely bred
youngster was never born, nor a happier one. Every one loved him just
as every one loved Josephine.

There I thought Josephine's story ended, and so far as she was
concerned, it did.

But when the baby was six years old, and forward for his age, the
Matron of the Friendly Society came into my room one day, when I was
there to take a longer rest than usual, after a very trying case, and
told me that she was in great distress. A friend of hers, who had been
her predecessor, and was now the Matron of an Orphan Asylum in New
York State, was going to the hospital to have a cataract removed from
her eye, and had written to ask her to come and take her place while