TWO LETTERS
"Oh, righteous doom, that they who make
Pleasure their only end,
Ordering the whole life for its sake,
Miss that whereto they tend;"
"While they who bid stern Duty lead,
Content to follow—they,
Of duty only taking heed
Find pleasure by the way."—Trench.
JEAN always looked back to that spring in after years, as a very happy bit of her life. She saw a good deal of Mrs. Fergusson, and then her son took her home, and Mrs. Gordon and Sunnie followed soon afterwards. Jean did not often meet the doctor. He had a good many engagements in town, and was generally away when she visited Sunnie. But the day before he went back to Scotland, she met him there, and when she left the house, he walked a part of the way home with her. She asked him then a question that had been continually in her thoughts.
"Will Sunnie's complete recovery of health change her nature?"
"Why should it?" he asked.
"I don't know," said Jean. "To me, she has been a child so different to all others, that I should hate to see her lose all her quaint individuality. She may, from constant association with other children, rub off the bloom. I can't express myself properly, but her invalid life has given her what an ordinary child's life could never give. And I don't want her changed."
"I think I know what you mean, but it would be rather selfish of us to want to keep her as she is, for our own gratification. It will be a much healthier life, physically and mentally, and I do not see why her spiritual life should suffer. I am not afraid of it." Then he added—
"I went to see her portrait the other day."
"Did you?" said Jean. "I sometimes wonder if I shall paint any one else with such pleasure, as I did that."
"You had a good subject," said the doctor. Then looking at her a little keenly, he asked: "Has this success of yours wedded you more than ever to your art? You did not appear to me to be entirely enamoured of it in Scotland?"