She tearfully shook her head. But he insisted.
“You will be—for his sake, as you once said to me. Don’t you remember?”
She remembered. She recalled all he wished her to: the prayer she had made that, whenever death should part her husband and her, he might not be the one left behind. Yes, she remembered; and the Doctor spoke again:—
“Now, I invite you to make this your principal business. I’ll pay you for it, regularly and well, what I think it’s worth; and it’s worth no trifle. There’s not one in a thousand that I’d trust to do it, woman or man; but I know you will do it all, and do it well, without any nonsense. And if you want to look at it so, Mary, you can just consider that it’s John doing it, all the time; for, in fact, that’s just what it is. It beats sewing, Mary, or teaching school, or making preserves, I think.”
“Yes,” said Mary, looking down on Alice, and stroking her head.
“You can stay right here where you are, with Madame Zénobie, as you had planned; but you’ll give yourself to this better work. I’ll give you a carte blanche. Only one mistake I charge you not to make; don’t go and come from day to day on the assumption that only the poor are poor, and need counsel and attention.”
“I know that would be a mistake,” said Mary.
“But I mean more than that,” continued the Doctor. “You must keep a hold on the rich and comfortable and happy. You want to be a medium between the two, identified with both as completely as possible. It’s a hard task, Mary. It will take all your cunning.”
“And more, too,” replied she, half-musing.
“You know,” said the Doctor, “I’m not to appear in the matter, of course; I’m not to be mentioned: that must be one of the conditions.”