“Where to?” he asked.  He had placed a cushion at her back and had settled himself beside her.

“To Trenton, to visit her friend Miss Collins and study music.  She says Warehold bores her.”

“And you don’t want her to go?”

“No; I don’t fancy Miss Collins, and I am afraid she has too strong an influence over Lucy.  Her personality grates on me; she is so boisterous, and she laughs so loud; and the views she holds are unaccountable to me in so young a girl.  She seems to have had no home training whatever.  Why Lucy likes her, and why she should have selected her as an intimate friend, has always puzzled me.”  She spoke with her usual frankness and with that directness which always characterized her in matters of this kind.  “I had no one else to talk to and am very miserable about it all.  You don’t mind my sending for you, do you?”

“Mind!  Why do you ask such a question?  I am never so happy as when I am serving you.”

That she should send for him at all was happiness.  Not sickness this time, nor some question of investment, nor the repair of the barn or gate or out-buildings—­but Lucy, who lay nearest her heart!  That was even better than he had expected.

“Tell me all about it, so I can get it right,” he continued in a straightforward tone—­the tone of the physician, not the lover.  She had relied on him, and he intended to give her the best counsel of which he was capable.  The lover could wait.

“Well, she received a letter a week ago from Miss Collins, saying she had come to Trenton for the winter and had taken some rooms in a house belonging to her aunt, who would live with her.  She wants to be within reach of the same music-teacher who taught the girls at Miss Parkham’s school.  She says if Lucy will come it will reduce the expenses and they can both have the benefit of the tuition.  At first Lucy did not want to go at all, now she insists, and, strange to say, Martha encourages her.”

“Martha wants her to leave?” he asked in surprise.

“She says so.”

The doctor’s face assumed a puzzled expression.  He could account for Lucy’s wanting the freedom and novelty of the change, but that Martha should be willing to part with her bairn for the winter mystified him.  He knew nothing of the flirtation, of course, and its effect on the old nurse, and could not, therefore, understand Martha’s delight in Lucy’s and Bart’s separation.

“You will be very lonely,” he said, and a certain tender tone developed in his voice.

“Yes, dreadfully so, but I would not mind if I thought it was for her good.  But I don’t think so.  I may be wrong, and in the uncertainty I wanted to talk it over with you.  I get so desolate sometimes.  I never seemed to miss my father so much as now.  Perhaps it is because Lucy’s babyhood and childhood are over and she is entering upon womanhood with all the dangers it brings.  And she frightens me so sometimes,” she continued after a slight pause.  “She is different; more self-willed, more self-centred.  Besides, her touch has altered.  She doesn’t seem to love me as she did—­not in the same way.”