“I am going to Linwood, and shall stay there to dinner.”

“In the name of the people, what has the child rigged herself out in that shape for?” Aunt Betsy exclaimed, letting fall the knife with which she was chopping cheese curd, and staring in astonishment.  “I’d enough sight rather you’d frizzle your hair over rats, as Helen does, making herself look like some horned critter, than wear that heathenish thing.  Why do you do it, Catherine?”

Catherine could not tell her, and laughing merrily at her aunt’s animadversions against her own and Helen’s style of hairdressing, she hurried away across the fields to Linwood.  Aunt Betsy’s surprise was in a measure shared by Helen, who, understanding Katy better, made no comments on her appearance, but smiled quietly at the air of matronly dignity which Katy had assumed, and which really sat so prettily upon her as she went from room to room to see what had been done, lingering longest in Morris’ own apartment, opening from the library, where she made some alterations in the arrangement of the furniture, putting one chair a little more to the right, and pushing a stand or table to the left, just as her artistic eye dictated.  By some oversight, no flowers had been put in there, but Katy gathered an exquisite bouquet and left it on the mantel, just where she remembered to have seen flowers when Morris was at home.

“He will he tired,” she said.  “He will lie down after dinner,” and she laid a few sweet English violets upon the pillow, thinking their perfume might be grateful to him after the pent-up air of the hospital and cars.  “He will think Helen put them there, or Mrs. Hull,” she thought, as she stole softly out and shut the door behind her, glancing next at the clock, and feeling a little impatient that a whole hour must elapse before they could expect him.

Poor Morris! he did not dream how anxiously he was waited for at home, nor yet of the crowd assembled at the depot to welcome back the loved physician, whom they had missed so much, and whose name they had so often heard coupled with praise as a true hero, even though his post was not in the front of the battle.  Thousands had been cared for by him, their gaping wounds dressed skillfully, their aching heads soothed tenderly, and their last moments made happier by the words he spoke to them of the world to which they were going, where there is no more war or shedding of man’s blood.  In the churchyard at Silverton there were three soldiers’ graves, whose pale occupants had each died with Dr. Grant’s hand held tightly in his, as if afraid that he would leave them before the dark river was crossed, while in more than one Silverton home there was a wasted form on which the soldier coat hung loosely, who never tired of telling Dr. Morris’ praise and dwelling on his goodness.  But Dr. Morris was not thinking of this as, faint and sick, with the green shade before his eyes, he leaned against the pile of shawls his companion had placed for his back and wondered if they were almost there.