She forced a laugh. “Why shouldn’t it come true?” she asked. “But you still loved her, didn’t you, Dad?” she asked. “I was very little at the time, but I can just remember. You seemed so happy together. Till her illness came.”!

“Yes,” he answered. “And take her with me. Poor little girl.” If the gift were noble, so also it could not be ignoble to accept it.

“Does it matter what we call it?” answered Joan. “It was a voice.” Joan expressed her thanks. She would like to have had more talk with the stern old lady, but was prevented by the entrance of two new comers. The first was Miss Lavery, a handsome, loud-toned young woman. She ran a nursing paper, but her chief interest was in the woman’s suffrage question, just then coming rapidly to the front. She had heard Joan speak at Cambridge and was eager to secure her adherence, being wishful to surround herself with a group of young and good-looking women who should take the movement out of the hands of the “frumps,” as she termed them. Her doubt was whether Joan would prove sufficiently tractable. She intended to offer her remunerative work upon the Nursing News without saying anything about the real motive behind, trusting to gratitude to make her task the easier. “You see, dear, I began when I was young,” she explained; “and he has always seen me the same. I don’t think I could live like this.”