A Houseful of Girls

re to take the first plunge into unknown waters. If things had been as they were formerly, and there had been leisure to spare from rougher rubs for highly del

ed with it had been in honour hushed up. People had too many weighty matters to thin

nd by the lessons she had received from the wandering exhibitor at the Academy and the Grosvenor, neither she nor her family could be sufficiently infatuated to imagine she wanted no more teaching. Their conceptions of art might be crude, and their fait

ess in a ladies' school, a situation which she could fill on two days of the week, while she attended the art classes on the remaining four. The salary thus obtained was of the smallest, but it would supplement Mrs. Millar's allowance to Rose, and help to pay her board in some quiet, respectable family living midway between the school and the stu

d only be at the head of a charitable institution. She might save the greater part of her income then, and hand it over to her father, but that was a very different prospect from the other. Still, from the beginning Annie would be, so to speak, self-supporting; she need not cost her mother or anybody else a penny, her very dress would be provided for her. Above all Annie was going to do a great deal of good, to be a comfort and blessing, not only to her people, but to multitudes beside

and power of holding those of others in check, the quick and correct faculty of observation she had displayed. But with all his loyal allegiance to the calling which had been his father's before it was his, which he would have liked to see his son fill, if a son had been born to him, he was taken aback and well-nigh dismayed, as her mother was, when Annie came and tol

ith conviction. "I know there must be strict discipline and hard trying work, with no respite or relaxation to speak of; but I am young and strong, fitter to stand such an ordeal than most girls of my age are qualified.

ng out into the world before our misfortunes in connection

r kindness, for I believe you are the best, dearest father and mother in the world," she cried, carried out of herself, and betrayed into enthusiasm. "But what were you to do with a houseful of girls, when one would have

household of girls, far enough scattered now, poor dears!"-parenthetically apostrophizing herself and her youthful companions with unconscious pathos-"I would have liked to hear any one say to us, or to our father and mother, that we were no good in the world. I call it a positive sin in the young people of this generation to be so restless and dissati

eful of girls, made by one of themselves, while she, their mother, the author of their being, poor unsophisticated woman! had

. Millar, "you must make allo

even with teaching once a week in the Rector's Sunday-school-for my object in life. But after the way in which things have turned out, there is no need to discuss former views. Mother dear, it is surely well that I had not a hankering after idleness, after lying in bed half the forenoon, as people say the Dyers do, getting up only to read t

hings. I find it a great improvement on driving. I have been troubled with-let me see, oh! yes, cold feet-a deficiency in the circu

but I really think that I have a natural turn for nursing, derived from you father, and grandfather, no doubt, which might have made me also a good doctor supposing

nodded in acquiescence, while he linked

he brougham, gave his hand the terrible hack with the axe in breaking wood for cook, I was able to stop the loss of blood, and did not get in the least faint myself. Yes, I know it would be very pitiful to see a human creature die whom we could not save," she added, in a lower tone, "and very sad to prepare such a one for the grave. But, dear mother, somebody has to do it at some time, and I ma

as he looked at the reverently bent head, and

le to think of her associated with disease and death, she whom her father and mother would have sheltered from every rough wind. Yet what w

er of an e

r

reathing thou

'twixt lif

under her superficial hardness and inclination to conceal her feelings, something which her family had not suspected, brought to light by their troubles? something of which every

e age of admission for probationers, and there is one hospital that admits them at twenty. Would not the fact of my being a doctor's daughter go for something? Have you not interest, father, if you care to exert it, to get the hospital authorities to stretch a point where I am concerned? You might tell

d, she was more agitated than she had yet been, and for Anni

t-something seems to come over me and impel me to do it. Often I cannot resist making game of people. I am so silly and fond of fun, like a child, a great deal worse than 'little May' ever is, when the fit is upon me. Now, if I could think that I should lose patienc

y dear," said Dr. Milla

u remember my bad eyes last winter, when I had to get that tincture dropped into them so often that your father could not always be at home to do it? You dropped the tincture as well as your father could, and though I know I must have made faces wry enough to frighten a cat, you never vouchsafed a remark, and I did not hear the ghost of

Millar, laughing. "Not that she has the knack of the operator, any more t

ded in a lower tone, "And oh, mother, how coul

y piece of head-gear. "When she sent for your father all of a sudden, just when he had been summoned to Dr. Hewett's brother, who was very ill, as we knew, while we thought Miss Sill had only one of her maiden-lady fancies, your father told you to go over and say he would be with her in the course of the day. But you found her nearly choking with bronchitis. How you were not frightened out o

looking at her, and beginning to sob and cry; but I made several gross mistakes. You to

ls you her young doctor to this day, and says she will send for you in pref

woman!" de

r since then. You have gone of your own accord twice as often, and I am sure you have no

fantastic and foolish; but it does make a difference in one's judgment of a person to have really rendered

ed in her own eyes. What had she been doing? Proving to her dau

, not that, but not too impatient, sarcastic, and trifling to be a nurse," said Anni

to it than did the latter, with an entire faith in Annie and an affectionate admiration which was genuine homage. It swelled Dora's heart well-nigh to bursting with sister-worship. How good Annie w

brief space to the charmed circle of the county. What she had to go through-whether she would or not-in the end, was not worse than Annie was proposing to encounter in the beginning, to live in an hospital, to spend her blooming life amidst frightful accidents, raging fevers, the spasm of agony replaced by the chill silence and stillness of death. Annie's father's time and strength had been give

no more interfere to keep back Annie from her calling than a go