every hitching-post along the main street of Warehold village from Billy Tatham's, the driver of the country stage, to Captain Holt's, could prove—he always had time for a word with the old nurse. 

 "And where have YOU been, Mistress Martha?" he asked, with a smile, dropping his whip into the socket, a sure sign that he had a few more minutes to give her. 

 "Oh, down to the beach to git some o' the dirt off Meg. Look at him—did ye ever see such a rapscallion! Every time I throw him in he's into the sand ag'in wallowin' before I kin git to him." 

 The doctor bent his head, and for an instant watched the two dogs: Meg circling about Rex, all four legs taut, his head jerking from side to side in his eagerness to be agreeable to his roadside acquaintance; the agate-eyed setter returning Meg's attentions with the stony gaze of a club swell ignoring a shabby relative. The doctor smiled thoughtfully. There was nothing he loved to study so much as dogs—they had a peculiar humor of their own, he often said, more enjoyable sometimes than that of men—then he turned to Martha again. 

 "And why are you away from home this morning of all others?" he asked. "I thought Miss Lucy was expected from school to-day?" 

 "And so she is, God bless her! And that's why I'm here. I was that restless I couldn't keep still, and so I says to Miss Jane, 'I'm goin' to the beach with Meg and watch the ships go by; that's the only thing that'll quiet my nerves. They're never in a hurry with everybody punchin' and haulin' them.' Not that there's anybody doin' that to me, 'cept like it is to-day when I'm waitin' for my blessed baby to come back to me. Two years, doctor—two whole years since I had my arms round her. Wouldn't ye think I'd be nigh crazy?" 

 "She's too big for your arms now, Martha," laughed the doctor, gathering up his reins. "She's a woman—seventeen, isn't she?" 

 "Seventeen and three months, come the fourteenth of next July. But she's not a woman to me, and she never will be. She's my wee bairn that I took from her mother's dyin' arms and nursed at my own breast, and she'll be that wee bairn to me as long as I live. Ye'll be up to see her, won't ye, doctor?" 

 "Yes, to-night. How's Miss Jane?" As he made the inquiry his eyes kindled and a slight color suffused his cheeks. 

 "She'll be better for seein' ye," the nurse answered with a knowing look. 

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