have to watch her every minute, like a child; and I never know what she
will do next."

"Yes; it's a burden," said Mrs. Breen, with a sympathy which she had not
expressed before. "And you're a good girl, Grace," she added in very
unwonted recognition.

The grateful tears stole into the daughter's eyes, but she kept a firm
face, even after they began to follow one another down her cheeks. "And
if Louise had n't come, you know, mother, that I was anxious to have some
older person with me when I went to Fall River. I was glad to have this
respite; it gives me a chance to think. I felt a little timid about
beginning alone."

"A man would n't," Mrs. Breen remarked.

"No. I am not a man. I have accepted that; with all the rest. I don't
rebel against being a woman. If I had been a man, I should n't have
studied medicine. You know that. I wished to be a physician because I was
a woman, and because--because--I had failed where--other women's hopes
are." She said it out firmly, and her mother softened to her in
proportion to the girl's own strength. "I might have been just a nurse.
You know I should have been willing to be that, but I thought I could be
something more. But it's no use talking." She added, after an interval,
in which her mother rocked to and fro with a gentle motion that searched
the joints of her chair, and brought out its most plaintive squeak in
pathetic iteration, and watched Grace, as she sat looking seaward through
the open window, "I think it's rather hard, mother, that you should be
always talking as if I wished to take my calling mannishly. All that I
intend is not to take it womanishly; but as for not being a woman about