"But it isn't all; it isn't any thing!" exclaimed Sally. "If he were an
ugly dwarf, I should love him just as well. Oh, Hetty, if you only knew
how good he was to me, when I was sick seven years ago! I should have
died if it hadn't been for him. There wasn't a woman at the Corners that
ever came near me, except Mrs. Patrick, the Irish woman I boarded with;
and, he used to stop and make broth for me, on my stove, with his
own hands, and sit and hold the baby on his knees, and talk to me so
beautifully about her. He just kept me alive."

Hetty's face flushed. Sally had never told her so much before; she could
not help a glow at her heart, at the picture of the handsome young
doctor sitting with the poor, outcast baby on his knees, and comforting
the poor outcast mother. But Hetty was a Gunn; and, as Dr. Eben had
said, obstinate. She could not forget her partisanship for Dr. Tuthill.
She was even all the angrier with the young doctor for being so clever,
so kind, so skilful, so handsome, and so pleasant, that everybody wanted
him. "I dare say," she replied. "He'd do any thing to curry favor. He's
been determined from the first to get all the practice of the whole
county, and I suppose as soon as Doctor Tuthill dies, he'll have it; and
he may as well, for I don't doubt he's a good doctor: but I think it was
a mean underhand thing to come in here and try to cut another man out."

"Why, Hetty!" remonstrated Sally, in a tone of unusual vehemence for
her. "Why, Hetty; there wasn't any doctor at the Corners: he didn't cut
anybody out there; and I'm sure they needed a doctor bad enough; and it
was his native place too."

"Oh! that's all very well to say," answered Hetty. "It's a likely story,
isn't it, that anybody'd settle in Lonway Four Corners, just for the