Octavia's Pride; or, The Missing Witness — page 72: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

62 OCTAVIA’'S PRIDE. taken the worst off my mind. Little Jenny will be cared for. Now I am ready for anything. Do what you’re a mind to, doctor.” ‘You understand the risk—that it is ten against one. You wish the amputation to be tried?” “Indeed, sir, 1 do, and I trust it all to you. It will be right for Jenny either way.” eis And so it was. ‘The man sank under the operation, and Jane West came to live in Doctor Morley’s house. She had been there fifteen years now, and had grown up under his eyes into the same staid, discreet, but bright-looking young woman. He had played with her at first, but in an awkward fashion, and he was thankful when her strengthening in- tellect allowed him to take her into his studies. It was her love for Doctor Morley which first induced her to enter the dry precincts of such researches as his, but presently she was fascinated and enthralled, and' became an eager student for herself. The doctor often secretly wondered at the aptitude and nerve she showed, never shrinking even from the first dis- section he allowed her to ‘witness. He took singular pleasure in assisting and directing her, playfully called her his young student—his embryo doctor. Living in their isolated way, it was natural that she should share a great deal of his confidence—that he should in a measure forget her sex, and converse upon graver and weightier themes than women are accustomed fo. At first he had, in a blind sort of fashion, tried to cut down, and prune his thoughts and instructions into the lighter delicacy of diet supposed to be the only digestible one for women. But after he came home one day and found that she had extracted a tooth, in her intense sym- pathy for a suffering child, and performed the—for a wo- -man—heroic operation successfully and skillfully, he grew comicbooks.co mn ‘