"What will you do?"
"I shall go to live with my aunt in Winnipeg, and study something, so
that I can earn my own living. A teacher, perhaps."
"That's a lonely life!" said Ralph.
She looked away. "Better than being idle," she said.
"I must begin to think what I am going to do," said Ralph.
"Plenty of time."
"I shall go home for a while, of course. The mater will luxuriate in a
convalescent son! Then I must build up a practice in some growing
city. A doctor goes to seed in the wilds; there is not enough to do.
I begin to feel a need of work!"
"Work!" said Kitty, looking at his transparent hands with a smile of
affectionate scorn.
"Doctoring's a great job!" said Ralph. "Where would you advise me to
establish myself?"
"How should I know?" murmured Kitty, head averted.
"What kind of a place is Winnipeg?"
A slow crimson tide crept up from her neck to her forehead.
Fortunately Ralph's eyes were closed. "A busy, ugly town," she said.
"But it's growing very fast. They say it has a great future."
"As soon as I am on my feet I'll come up and look it over," he said.
He soon fell asleep again. Kitty leaned her arms on the rail, and
gazed dreamily at the brown flood with its squadrons of foam vessels
sailing demurely under the steamboat's counter; and at the shore with
its endless procession of pine trees wrapped in the delicate veils of
October. She chid herself for the little spring of happiness that
welled in her breast, and sought to choke it with common sense, but it
continually found new ways out.
Downstream she saw a canoe lying on a point, and behind it a thread of
smoke ascending among the trees. They had seen no sign of humanity
since they had left Silver Landing sixty miles upstream, and she waited
curiously to see what manner of people these were. Presently she
distinguished two figures, a man lying on the ground and a woman
bending over the fire. The steamboat was travelling fast with the
current and she had no sooner made them out than she was upon them. It
was a point of rock, and they passed close enough to toss a biscuit
ashore.
The woman straightened, and Kitty instantly recognized the firm round
figure and the graceful, proudly poised head. As the steamboat swept
by they looked directly into each other's faces. A wild agitation
shook Kitty; it was as if the terrible past had been fished up and
suddenly placed before her. The other woman's hands went to her breast
in the old quick way. She glanced quickly from Kitty to the sleeping
form in the chair and back again. Then she smiled--a wonderful smile
irradiating her sad face from within. Kitty experienced a quick
revulsion. The tears sprang to her eyes. She stood up, and leaning
over the rail, kissed her hand to the rapidly lessening figure on
shore, A bend in the river intervened.