To her amazement, the officials at headquarters, taking into account the peculiar circumstances of the case, paid her full salary up to the date of her resignation, and sent her a hundred dollars as compensation for injuries received and her consequent loss of work.
“I expect they got shamed into it by what the Syndicate did,” said Mrs. Nichols, which was a little ungracious on her part, as doubtless the officials at headquarters knew nothing whatever of the action of the Syndicate in honouring the heroine.
“I can sit still comfortably now until my arm gets better, and then I will just go to work and fit myself to be something special in the world,” said Nell, gaily. “I should love to go to college and study medicine, only I’m afraid the money wouldn’t be enough to carry me through, or I might not be clever enough to get a degree. Would it not be lovely if I were Dr. Eleanor Hamblyn?”
“I would rather see you happily married to some good man,” grumbled Mrs. Nichols.
“One cannot always have what one wants, so that pretty little dream of yours may never be realized,” laughed Nell. Then she was suddenly overtaken with a sober fit, and went off to her room, where she stayed for quite a long time in a brown study as to ways and means.
When she applied to the doctor for advice about the best way of going to work to secure a thorough education, with a possible college course to complete it, to her surprise he threw cold water on the whole scheme, and advised her either to invest the money with a view to a rainy day, or to use it to start herself in some business.
“But I don’t know any business; and I want to be a cultured woman,” explained Nell.
“There is no reason why you should not be a business woman and cultured too,” he said, smiling at the look of disgust on her face.
“I have not been trained to business,” she objected.
“Nor have you been trained to entering a profession,” he answered quietly. “Except, perhaps, school-teaching, which is fearfully wearing work. There is not a profession that is not over-stocked, while there is always a crying need for bright capable women in what are mistakenly called the humbler walks of life.”