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 appeared around a bend in the path, and she started hysterically at his greeting.

He had been up at the mine and was making a short cut through the barnyard to the road where, unnoticed by Eletheer, his horse was still tied. His practiced eye detected at a glance the traces of tears which she defiantly repressed and, pointing to a rustic bench, he said,—"Come, let us sit in the sunlight and see if you are in earnest about becoming a trained nurse, which Dr. Brinton tells me you have decided to do."

"Yes," she replied simply, "my grandmother thought I had a real talent for nursing."

Dr. Herschel looked at her fixedly. This was not the first girl whom he had seen possessed of a "real talent" for nursing, whose heart "yearned for the sweet joys of ministering to the afflicted"; but in his experience the majority of these ardent maidens had been quickly disillusioned. Possibly the girl beside him was different. True, she knew nothing of the world and all its distractions, but she did not seem sentimentally inclined.