Dr. Breen's Practice. William Dean Howells

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      “I don't know!”

      “You had better look out, Mr. Libby!” said Mrs. Maynard, putting her foot on the ground at last.

      They walked across the beach to where his dory lay, and Grace saw him pulling out to the sail boat before she went in from the piazza. Then she went to her mother's room. The elderly lady was keeping indoors, upon a theory that the dew was on, and that it was not wholesome to go out till it was off. She asked, according to her habit when she met her daughter alone, “Where is Mrs. Maynard?”

      “Why do you always ask that, mother?” retorted Grace, with her growing irritation in regard to her patient intensified by the recent interview. “I can't be with her the whole time.”

      “I wish you could,” said Mrs. Breen, with noncommittal suggestion.

      Grace could not keep herself from demanding, “Why?” as her mother expected, though she knew why too well.

      “Because she wouldn't be in mischief then,” returned Mrs. Breen.

      “She's in mischief now!” cried the girl vehemently; “and it's my fault! I did it. I sent her off to sail with that ridiculous Mr. Libby!”

      “Why?” asked Mrs. Breen, in her turn, with unbroken tranquillity.

      “Because I am a fool, and I couldn't help him lie out of his engagement with her.”

      “Did n't he want to go?”

      “I don't know. Yes. They both wanted me to go with them. Simpletons! And while she had gone up-stairs for her wraps I managed to make him understand that I did n't wish her to go, either; and he ran down to his boat, and came back with a story about its going to be rough, and looked at me perfectly delighted, as if I should be pleased. Of course, then, I made him take her.”

      “And is n't it going to be rough?” asked Mrs. Green.

      “Why, mother, the sea's like glass.”

      Mrs. Breen turned the subject. “You would have done better, Grace, to begin as you had planned. Your going to Fall River, and beginning practice there among those factory children, was the only thing that I ever entirely liked in your taking up medicine. There was sense in that. You had studied specially for it. You could have done good there.”

      “Oh, yes,” sighed the girl, “I know. But what was I to do, when she came to us, sick and poor? I couldn't turn my back on her, especially after always befriending her, as I used to, at school, and getting her to depend on me.”

      “I don't see how you ever liked her,” said Mrs. Breen.

      “I never did like her. I pitied her. I always thought her a poor, flimsy little thing. But that ought n't to make any difference, if she was in trouble.”

      “No,” Mrs. Breen conceded, and in compensation Grace admitted something more on her side: “She's worse than she used to be,—sillier. I don't suppose she has a wrong thought; but she's as light as foam.”

      “Oh, it is n't the wicked people who, do the harm,” said Mrs. Green.

      “I was sure that this air would be everything for her; and so it would, with any ordinary case. But a child would take better care of itself. I have to watch her every minute, like a child; and I never know what she will do next.”

      “Yes; it's a burden,” said Mrs. Breen, with a sympathy which she had not expressed before. “And you're a good girl, Grace,” she added in very unwonted recognition.

      The grateful tears stole into the daughter's eyes, but she kept a firm face, even after they began to follow one another down her cheeks. “And if Louise had n't come, you know, mother, that I was anxious to have some older person with me when I went to Fall River. I was glad to have this respite; it gives me a chance to think. I felt a little timid about beginning alone.”

      “A man would n't,” Mrs. Breen remarked.

      “No. I am not a man. I have accepted that; with all the rest. I don't rebel against being a woman. If I had been a man, I should n't have studied medicine. You know that. I wished to be a physician because I was a woman, and because—because—I had failed where—other women's hopes are.” She said it out firmly, and her mother softened to her in proportion to the girl's own strength. “I might have been just a nurse. You know I should have been willing to be that, but I thought I could be something more. But it's no use talking.” She added, after an interval, in which her mother rocked to and fro with a gentle motion that searched the joints of her chair, and brought out its most plaintive squeak in pathetic iteration, and watched Grace, as she sat looking seaward through the open window, “I think it's rather hard, mother, that you should be always talking as if I wished to take my calling mannishly. All that I intend is not to take it womanishly; but as for not being a woman about it, or about anything, that's simply impossible. A woman is reminded of her insufficiency to herself every hour of the day. And it's always a man that comes to her help. I dropped some things out of my lap down there, and by the time I had gathered them up I was wound round and round with linen thread so that I could n't move a step, and Mr. Libby cut me loose. I could have done it myself, but it seemed right and natural that he should do it. I dare say he plumed himself upon his service to me,—that would be natural, too. I have things enough to keep me meek, mother!”

      She did not look round at Mrs. Breen, who said, “I think you are morbid about it.”

      “Yes. And I have the satisfaction of knowing that whatever people think of Louise's giddiness, I'm, a great deal more scandalous to them than she is simply because I wish to do some good in the world, in a way that women have n't done it, usually.”

      “Now you are morbid.”

      “Oh, yes! Talk about men being obstacles! It's other women! There isn't a woman in the house that would n't sooner trust herself in the hands of the stupidest boy that got his diploma with me than she would in mine. Louise knows it, and she feels that she has a claim upon me in being my patient. And I 've no influence with her about her conduct because she understands perfectly well that they all consider me much worse. She prides herself on doing me justice. She patronizes me. She tells me that I'm just as nice as, if I hadn't 'been through all that.'” Grace rose, and a laugh, which was half a sob, broke from her.

      Mrs. Breen could not feel the humor of the predicament. “She puts you in a false position.”

      “I must go and see where that poor little wretch of a child is,” said Grace, going out of the room. She returned in an hour, and asked her mother for the arnica. “Bella has had a bump,” she explained.

      “Why, have you been all this time looking for her?

      “No, I couldn't find her, and I've been reading. Barlow has just brought her in. HE could find her. She fell out of a tree, and she's frightfully bruised.”

      She was making search on a closet shelf as she talked. When she reappeared with the bottle in her hand, her mother asked, “Is n't it very hot and close?”

      “Very,” said Grace.

      “I should certainly think they would perish,” said Mrs. Breen, hazarding the pronoun, with a woman's confidence that her interlocutor would apply it correctly.

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