Polly can't say enough for him. She fairly cries if one mentions his name. 

 "'I should have been Jem's widow but for Dr. Luttrell,' she said one day.  'Why, before he came in Jem was lying there vowing "that he had sooner die than part with his leg."  It was the thought of the little uns that broke him. My Jem always had a feeling heart.'" 

 And other folks, although they had not Widow Bates's garrulous tongue, were ready enough to sing the doctor's praises. 

 When Dot was a year old and able to pull herself up by the help of her mother's hand, things were no better at the corner house. Olivia had even consulted her Aunt Madge about the advisability of sending Martha away and doing the work of the house herself. 

 "Martha is the best girl we have had yet," she said.  "Marcus owned that yesterday. She is rough, but her ways are nicer than Anne's or Sally's, and she keeps herself clean; but then, Aunt Madge, she has such a good appetite, and one cannot stint growing girls." 

 "I should keep her a little longer," was Aunt Madge's reply to this. "It will only take the heart out of Marcus, knowing that you have to scrub and black-lead stoves, and he is discouraged enough already. When Dot is able to run about, you may be able to dispense with Martha's services," and Olivia returned a reluctant assent to this. 

 But her conscience was not quite satisfied. Even Aunt Madge, she thought, hardly knew how bad things really were. 

 Mrs. Broderick was a chronic invalid, and never went beyond the two rooms that made her little world. Most people would have considered it a dull, narrow life, and one hardly worth living; but the invalid would have contradicted this. 

 Madge Broderick had learned the secret of contentment; she had lived through great troubles—the loss of the husband she had idolised, and her only little child. Since then acute suffering that the doctors had been unable to relieve had wasted her strength. Nevertheless, there was a peaceful atmosphere in the sunshiny room, where she lay hour after hour reading and working with her faithful companion Zoe beside her. 

 Zoe was a beautiful brown-and-white spaniel, with eyes that were almost human in their soft beseechingness, and Mrs. Broderick often lamented that she could not eulogise his doggish virtues as Mrs. Browning had immortalised her Flush. 

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