“Nan dear, it isn’t the least matter in the world!” said Dr. Leslie.  “I think we are a little chilly here this damp night; suppose you light the fire?  At any rate it will clear away all those envelopes and newspaper wrappers,” and he turned his arm-chair so that it faced the fireplace, and watched the young girl as she moved about the room.  She lifted one of the large sticks and stood it on one end at the side of the hearth, and the doctor noticed that she did it less easily than usual and without the old strength and alertness.  He had sprung up to help her just too late, but she had indignantly refused any assistance with a half pettishness that was not a common mood with her.

“I don’t see why Jane or Marilla, or whoever it was, put that heavy log on at this time of the year,” said Dr. Leslie, as if it were a matter of solemn consequence.  By this time he had lighted a fresh cigar, and Nan had brought her little wooden chair from some corner of the room where it had always lived since it came with her from the farm.  It was a dear old-fashioned little thing, but quite too small for its owner, who had grown up tall and straight, but who had felt a sudden longing to be a child again, as she quietly took her place before the fire.

“That log?” she said, “I wonder if you will never learn that we must not burn it?  I saw Marilla myself when she climbed the highest wood-pile at the farther end of the wood-house for it.  I suppose all the time I have been away you have been remorselessly burning up the show logs.  I don’t wonder at her telling me this very morning that she was born to suffer, and suffer she supposed she must.  We never used to be allowed to put papers in the fireplace, but you have gained ever so many liberties.  I wonder if Marilla really thinks she has had a hard life?” the girl said, in a different tone.

“I wonder if you think yours is hard too?” asked the doctor.

And Nan did not know at first what to say.  The bright light of the burning papers and the pine-cone kindlings suddenly faded out and the study seemed dark and strange by contrast; but the doctor did not speak either; he only bent towards her presently, and put his hand on the top of the girl’s head and stroked the soft hair once or twice, and then gently turned it until he could see Nan’s face.

Her eyes met his frankly as ever, but they were full of tears.  “Yes,” she said; “I wish you would talk to me.  I wish you would give me a great scolding.  I never needed it so much in my life.  I meant to come home and be very good, and do everything I could to make you happy, but it all grows worse every day.  I thought at first I was tired with the last days of school, but it is something more than that.  I don’t wish in the least that I were back at school, but I can’t understand anything; there is something in me that wants to be busy, and can’t find anything to do.  I don’t mean to be discontented; I don’t want to be anywhere else in the world.”