Nan, half-comforted, went to find the book, while Dr. Leslie, puffing his cigar-smoke very fast, looked up through the cloud abstractedly at a new ornament which had been placed above the mantel shelf since we first knew the room.  Old Captain Finch had solaced his weary and painful last years by making a beautiful little model of a ship, and had left it in his will to the doctor.  There never was a more touching gift, this present owner often thought, and he had put it in its place with reverent hands.  A comparison of the two lives came stealing into his mind, and he held the worn prescription-book a minute before he opened it.  The poor old captain waiting to be released, stranded on the inhospitable shore of this world, and eager Nan, who was sorrowfully longing for the world’s war to begin.  “Two idle heroes,” thought Dr. Leslie, “and I neither wished to give one his discharge nor the other her commission;” but he said aloud, “Nan, we will take a six o’clock start in the morning, and go down through the sandy plains before the heat begins.  I am afraid it will be one of the worst of the dog-days.”

“Yes,” answered Nan eagerly, and then she came close to the doctor, and looked at him a moment before she spoke, while her face shone with delight.  “I am going to be a doctor, too!  I have thought it would be the best thing in the world ever since I can remember.  The little prescription-book was the match that lit the fire! but I have been wishing to tell you all the evening.”

“We must ask Marilla,” the doctor began to say, and tried to add, “What will she think?” but Nan hardly heard him, and did not laugh at his jokes.  For she saw by his face that there was no need of teasing.  And she assured herself that if he thought it was only a freak of which she would soon tire, she was quite willing to be put to the proof.

Next morning, for a wonder, Nan waked early, even before the birds had quite done singing, and it seemed a little strange that the weather should be clear and bright, and almost like June, since she was a good deal troubled.

She felt at first as if there were some unwelcome duty in her day’s work, and then remembered the early drive with great pleasure, but the next minute the great meaning and responsibility of the decision she had announced the evening before burst upon her mind, and a flood of reasons assailed her why she should not keep to so uncommon a purpose.  It seemed to her as if the first volume of life was ended, and as if it had been deceitfully easy, since she had been led straight-forward to this point.  It amazed her to find the certainty take possession of her mind that her vocation had been made ready for her from the beginning.  She had the feeling of a reformer, a radical, and even of a political agitator, as she tried to face her stormy future in that summer morning loneliness.  But by the time she had finished her early breakfast, and was driving out of the gate with the doctor, the day seemed so