"Then I'm a cumbering care!"
"Whether you are or not, I'm not going to steal away from you to-night.
Come, do as I bid you."
He was only too glad to submit to her delicious tyranny. She wheeled the lounge up to the fire, and placed her chair beside it, while the rest of the family, seeing that he had his old malady, went to the sitting-room.
"I have great pride in my nursing powers," she continued, in her cheery way. "Now, if I were a man, I'd certainly be a doctor."
"Thank Heaven you are not!" he said, with a devout earnestness that quite startled her.
"What? A doctor?" she asked, quickly.
"Yes—no; I mean a man, and doctor too."
"I see no reason why you should show such bitter opposition to my being a man or a doctor either. Why should you?"
"O—well—I think you are just right as a woman. You make me believe in the doctrine of election, for it seems to me that you were destined from all eternity to be just what you are."
"What a strange, unfathomable doctrine that is!" said Annie, softly and musingly.