She hesitated, but her mother wit soon extricated her from the difficulty.
"There's lots of folks doing what the Lord didn't intend them to do—doctors as well as others."
"Well done, Mrs. Blake, I will retire from the field before I am annihilated altogether."
"You needn't be in a hurry to go. We'd like to get this business settled first," Mrs. Blake said, a trifle anxiously, misunderstanding the doctor's meaning. He threw me a meaning glance, and afterward whispered,—"That woman is a diamond in the rough. Given a fair start in life, she would have found a proper sphere in almost any calling."
"I believe she would. She has done more for me than any other single individual."
"She!" he asked with keen surprise.
"Yes, she wakened me from selfish ease to see the sufferings of others, and to realize my sisterhood to them."
"Yes, but you must first have had a heart to be touched, or all the Mrs. Blakes on this planet could not have wakened it."
"Even allowing your words to be true, does it not show power amounting very nearly to genius to be able to arouse another to a painful duty, and help them to take hold of it—I won't say, manfully?"
"No, a better word is needed in this case. Woman's fine sympathy and instinct are too perfect to be called after any masculine term wholly human."