"Yes; Angus Stewart," returned Cathy, in a brisk, off-hand voice; "he comes from Carlisle. Ah, by the-bye, I should not be surprised if he should prove an old hospital acquaintance of yours, Miss Faith. What fun that will be! After all, the world is not so large as one thinks it."
"It is very strange," rejoined Miss Faith, and her lips trembled nervously over her words. "The coincidence of the name and the place startled me a little. I knew some one of that name in Carlisle—let me see—ten years ago."
"How very odd!" returned her companion, with well-counterfeited surprise, and looking straight before her. "Only ten years ago? Ah, then it must be the same; besides, the name is so very uncommon."
"Angus? ah, that is what he used to say. He was very proud of his name. He told me once that was all of which he had to be proud. He was so poor, he meant. He was the house surgeon, and one used to see a good deal of him. He had a mother and sister, I remember, who lived in such a tiny house in the town."
"And you have never seen him since?"
"No," hesitating and faltering; "I had to give up nursing, and come back to Cara. One loses friends sometimes in that way. It was hard, of course; for I loved my work and my children; but one must do hard things sometimes in this world," finished poor Miss Faith, with unconscious philosophy.
CHAPTER X.
THE NEW DOCTOR.
"I learn'd at last submission to my lot,
But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot."
Cowper.
"I wonder how women of thirty-five feel under these circumstances," thought Cathy, as she followed the others up the narrow dark staircase leading to Miss Cosie's neat sanctum. "I should have imagined all sentiment would have been worried out of them by this time, in this dismal old mill-pond they call life. It is very odd, but it is amusing too," she continued, with a certain girlish curiosity at the elderly romance that was impending before her eyes. After all it was not without its pathos. "Perhaps he will not recognize her when they meet, or most likely he has a wife and two or three children somewhere; I would not answer for him. It is the women who are faithful in these cases. In my opinion Jacob is the exception, not the rule. Poor old Jacob, how threadbare they have worn him! He was very patient and deep, but I liked Esau best."