"Why, there is no need of our going yet, if it isn't best. Don't look
so! Sally can stay here all summer if it will do her good."

"You misunderstood me, Miss Gunn," said the doctor, now himself again.
"It will really be perfectly safe for Mrs. Little to go home. She is
entirely well."

"What did you mean then?" said Hetty, looking him straight in the eye
with honest perplexity in her face. "You looked as if you didn't think
it best to go."

"No, Miss Gunn," replied Dr. Eben. "I looked as if I did not want to go.
It has been so pleasant here: that was all."

"Oh," said Hetty, in a relieved tone, "was that it? I feel just so, too:
it has been delightful; it is the only real play-spell I ever had in
my life. But for all that I'm really impatient to get home: they need
me on the farm; the men have not been doing just as they ought to. Jim
Little is all right when I'm there; but they take advantage of him
when I'm away. I really must get home before haying. I think we must
certainly go some day next week."

Dr. Eben was just going over to town for the letters. As he walked
slowly down to the beach, he said to himself:

"Haying! By Jove!" and this was pretty much all he thought during the
whole of the hour that he spent in rowing to and from the Safe Haven
wharf. "Haying!" he ejaculated again, and again. "What a woman that is!
I believe if we were all dead, she'd have just as keen an eye to that
haying!"