“I suppose there will be a great many obstacles,” reflected Nan, with an absence of her usual spirit.

“Obstacles!  Yes,” answered Dr. Leslie, vigorously.  “Of course there will be; it is climbing a long hill to try to study medicine or to study anything else.  And if you are going to fear obstacles you will have a poor chance at success.  There are just as many reasons as you will stop to count up why you should not do your plain duty, but if you are going to make anything of yourself you must go straight ahead, taking it for granted that there will be opposition enough, but doing what is right all the same.  I suppose I have repeated to you fifty times what old Friend Meadows told me years ago; he was a great success at money-making, and once I asked him to give me some advice about a piece of property.  ‘Friend Leslie,’ says he, ’thy own opinion is the best for thee; if thee asks ten people what to do, they will tell thee ten things, and then thee doesn’t know as much as when thee set out,’” and Dr. Leslie, growing very much in earnest, reached forward for the whip.  “I want you to be a good woman, and I want you to be all the use you can,” he said.  “It seems to me like stealing, for men and women to live in the world and do nothing to make it better.  You have thought a great deal about this, and so have I, and now we will do the best we can at making a good doctor of you.  I don’t care whether people think it is a proper vocation for women or not.  It seems to me that it is more than proper for you, and God has given you a fitness for it which it is a shame to waste.  And if you ever hesitate and regret what you have said, you won’t have done yourself any harm by learning how to take care of your own health and other people’s.”

“But I shall never regret it,” said Nan stoutly.  “I don’t believe I should ever be fit for anything else, and you know as well as I that I must have something to do.  I used to wish over and over again that I was a boy, when I was a little thing down at the farm, and the only reason I had in the world was that I could be a doctor, like you.”

“Better than that, I hope,” said Dr. Leslie.  “But you mustn’t think it will be a short piece of work; it will take more patience than you are ready to give just now, and we will go on quietly and let it grow by the way, like your water-weed here.  If you don’t drive a little faster, Sister Willet may be gathered before we get to her;” and this being a somewhat unwise and hysterical patient, whose recovery was not in the least despaired of, Dr. Leslie and his young companion were heartlessly merry over her case.

The doctor had been unprepared for such an episode; outwardly, life had seemed to flow so easily from one set of circumstances to the next, and the changes had been so gradual and so natural.  He had looked forward with such certainty to Nan’s future, that it seemed strange that the formal acceptance of such an inevitable idea as her studying medicine should have troubled her so much.