on the subject!" said Miss Phoebe Blyth.

Young doctor! young doctor! is this the way you are going to comport
yourself in the village of Elmerton? If so, there will be
flutterings indeed in the dove-cotes. Before night the whole village
knew that the young doctor was going to board with the Blyth girls!




CHAPTER II.


THE YOUNG DOCTOR

"And he certainly is a remarkable young man!" said Miss Phoebe Blyth.
"Is he not, Sister Vesta?"

Miss Vesta came out of her reverie; not with a start,--she never
started,--but with the quiet awakening, like that of a baby in the
morning, that was peculiar to her.

"Yes! oh, yes!" she said. "I consider him so. I think his coming
providential."

"How so?" asked the visitor. There was a slight acidity in her tone,
for Mrs. Weight was one of the motherly persons mentioned by the
minister's wife, and had looked forward to caring for the young
doctor herself. With her four children, all croupy, it would have
been convenient to have a physician in the house, and as the wife of