From the day when he took the farmers of his county to see how
another man had harnessed the creek which ran wild through his
pastures, setting it to work to cut the wood, and grind the grain and
to run every hand machine from the fanning-mill to the grindstone,
the Agricultural Representative began to see visions.
"Did you ever see anything like it?" one man exclaimed when they were
going over the details afterwards. "There wasn't a darned crank on
the place. The thing must do more than one man's work, and the most
soul-aggravatin' part of the work at that. Now at our place there's
just the boy and me to do everything, and we're prowlin' around the
barn with a lantern till nine o'clock most nights. We get a man for a
month or two sometimes, but the wife isn't strong and it makes more
work for her. Besides, as wages go now it doesn't pay. I know Jim
gets discouraged sometimes. He has a fair schooling and the wages he
could get in town must look pretty good compared with what we turn in
in actual cash from the farm; a boy doesn't see what capital's being
laid away in the place every year. If he's half alive he knows he's
living the best part of his life now; and he isn't going to waste it
all laying up something for a time when he can't enjoy it.
"I've tried to keep Jim at home by giving him a calf or a colt once
in a while, like my father used to do, but if a boy has to feed
calves and curry colts long after the hour when every other working
man has hung up his overalls, he gets sick of them. I never saw a boy
sick of tinkerin' around a gasoline engine or a motor, though. If Jim
goes his mother and I might as well go too, and we're so used to the
old place now that I guess we'd never get over being homesick if we
left it. I wish you'd come up and measure the flow of our creek."
Another evening one of the young men who had taken the junior
farmers' course in the winter came into the agricultural office
looking rather embarrassed.
"It's about the water-power," he began.
"Oh, yes," Billy encouraged. He wasn't thinking of much except water
power these days and was glad of an opportunity to unload his
enthusiasm. Besides, the boy had just commenced farming on a place of
his own, and the agricultural adviser knew that young blood moves
more quickly in adopting reforms. "I should think you'd have a pretty
good force from that hill of yours," he said. "What did you think of
doing?"
"Well, you see," the boy stammered, "it's like this. I ain't just
sure what's the best way. I want to get married and I don't know what
to do."
The Representative stared. He had had varied requests for advice
since he came to stand for the Department of Agriculture in the
community, but this was something new. Under his quizzical grin the
boy reddened painfully. He had never seen the Representative's steady
brown eyes hold such a glint of amusement, and he was afraid he was
going to laugh.
"I'm sorry," Billy said without looking particularly sympathetic,
"but I don't know much about it myself. It would just be a case of
the blind leading the blind."
"Oh!" The boy began to grasp things; then he roared. "I guess you'll
learn," he admitted dryly. "Leastways you don't strike the
neighborhood up around 'The Heights' as one that wasn't interested."
Billy felt his own face warming up. "The Heights" was the section
surrounding the Evison estate, and in his evening spins over the
country roads he had often met his client jogging quietly along in a
rubber-tired buggy, his feet stretched out comfortably on the
dashboard and his interest evidently very much absorbed in a
white-robed presence beside him. Billy felt that they had a
singularly common interest, and he shook hands with him across the
table.
"Go ahead," he said. "What has the water-power to do with your case?"
"If you'd been down at our club meetings oftener this summer you'd
have known I was keeping company with the school-teacher."
There was an unmistakable pride in the confession. The school-teacher
evidently held a rather superior place in the social life of the
neighborhood, and again Billy felt the nearness of a kindred
interest. At the same time he interpreted something of reproach in
the words "if you'd been down to our club meetings oftener...."
Unfortunately the club met on Tuesday evenings and Miss Evison seemed
to be free more often on Tuesday than on other nights of the week.
Frequently when he was about ready to leave the office the 'phone
would ring and the familiar flute-like voice would pipe, "I was
afraid you might have gone. I meant to call all afternoon and had
almost forgotten." Then the tone would drop almost to a whisper, "I'm
afraid I've been very stingy of my time lately, but we'd have the
whole evening to ourselves if you'd care to come to-night."
Once he had been obliged to tell her that this was the night when his
Junior Farmers held their meeting and that he had almost promised to
be there.
"I'm so sorry," she replied, with touching plaintiveness. "We're
having a little euchre. Some friends from town have just dropped in.
They're very informal, and I know you'd enjoy it. You couldn't leave
your precious young farmers for just one night?"
"I've done that so many nights. Perhaps I could leave the meeting
early and call on the way home?"
She was unmistakably hurt.
"Oh, no; don't trouble," she answered quickly. "I wouldn't _think_
of having you do such a thing. It doesn't matter. I just thought
perhaps you'd _like_ to come."
Another time he had asked her to come with him. It was an evening
when girls attended.
"You know," she said, "it's very sweet of you to offer to take me
right into your Holy-of-Holies to hear how they feed their calves and
the like, but it would be casting your pearls before a very
ungrateful little pig. I wouldn't enjoy it a bit. And I think, too,
if you'll take an experienced person's advice, that you're getting
too much of it yourself. Do you know that you've talked to me an hour
now, about waterwheels?"
"I'm sorry."
"I like to hear about them, and what you're doing and everything, but
don't you think if you work all day at that sort of thing, it's
enough without running to meetings at night? It doesn't leave you any
time for social interests at all. I'm sure you wouldn't have any
trouble in getting into the Country Club, and the people there are so
different. Most of the members are men and women of wide social
experience."
Billy knew something of their social experience, but he didn't tell
her. Neither did he make any effort to gain admittance to the club,
but he did spend more evenings attending theatres and motoring
excursions than was good for his Junior Farmers' Society. He felt
that he deserved the unconscious reproof, "If you'd been at our
meetings oftener," from this young man whose aspirations were, after
all, so like his own. Evidently, however, his friend's efforts had
accomplished something, while his case was as uncertain as ever.
"You're going to marry the teacher, then?" he asked.
"Yes." There was no doubt about that. "She isn't afraid to go on a
farm because she doesn't know anything about it. She'd always lived
in town before she came here, but she's crazy about the country, and
no gush about it either. She takes the kids to the woods and has them
making gardens at the school, and all that. When I bought the farm
every old wiseacre in the settlement came and said: 'You're making a
mistake. That girl's never done farm work and wouldn't stand it for a
year.' I could have wrung their necks. I didn't want to marry any
girl to have her help to support the place. I thought I could make
things so she wouldn't have to work any harder to take care of a home
out here than she would in town. There was no person I could ask
about it until you brought that girl out to the farm excursion. I
didn't know what she'd think, but I didn't suppose I'd ever see her
again, anyway, so I asked her if she thought a fellow had any right
to take a girl who didn't know anything about farming out to a place
like mine, and if she thought a farm house could be made just as
comfortable and handy as a place in town. She's some girl that. She
never smiled, and she didn't seem surprised--she was a sight more
considerate than some other people I know. She said that a girl worth
having wouldn't be afraid to take a chance on a few hardships with a
man, but that the work on an average farm with no conveniences at all
was too hard for any woman. Then she showed how an ordinary house
could be made a regular doves' nest for the price of an automobile."
Billy was thinking of his own inquiry on the way to the station. It
struck him with a certain grim amusement that she would be rather
impressed with the prevailing sentiment. And she had said: "A girl
worth having wouldn't be afraid to take a chance on a few hardships
with a man." She hadn't told him that.
When he came out of his reverie the boy was still talking.
"So I thought if you'd come and measure the flow of the creek," he
was saying, "I'd know what to do. If there isn't enough water power,
I'll get a gasoline engine big enough to pump water for a bathroom
and do the power work around the house, anyway."
A few other inquiries for power systems came in, but their motives
were more purely economic. The labor problem was becoming more
baffling every year; hired men were expensive, and they wouldn't
stay. The water power, once installed, would cost nothing; it would
work all day and all year until the bed of the stream was worn level.
Billy knew that once started the fever was bound to spread, and he
had visions.
When his car climbed the hills at sunrise, as it often did now that
the work was pressing, with school fairs and marketing associations
busy disposing of the year's harvests, he frequently saw a
round-shouldered, blue-overalled boy, half awake, plodding out to the
barn. He remembered well the sleepy stupidness, the torturing ache of
the body weakened by the fever of growth, and stiffened by long hours
of a man's work. Some day, he believed, every farm in the district
would have mechanical power doing the heartbreaking drudgery which
was making boys shiver at the thought of farming all their lives.
Occasionally a woman coming from the barn with her milk-pails and a
fretful little toddler or two tagging along after her would startle
him with a crowd of memories which he had been trying hard to forget.
Whatever changes might come now, he would always have to remember
that until he was old enough to do it himself, nothing had been done
to make things easier for his mother. In the evenings when he drove
home late and saw families still struggling with belated chores, he
had a dream of a time when every farm would have regular hours, when
the family would gather in the evenings not too tired to enjoy each
other, when the mothers of the farms, famed in all history for giving
the world its sturdiest, brainiest children, would have time to give
their best to all their children, to put their best work on the black
sheep, or misfits, or handicapped, or delicate ones, for whom there
is little special provision in the country outside their own homes.
A speaker at a political meeting in the town hall had recently
expressed something of the same ideas. "There is a movement for
better things among the farmers' wives," he said. "The idea is
finding recognition among them that all the prizes of progress are no
longer to be allowed to go to the man-life on the farm while the
woman-life is left to vegetate. The woman on the farm must bear the
oncoming hosts of strong men, or they will not be borne. And unless
the farm women can live under conditions which make for happiness,
health and pride our whole nation will be weakened by ill-health,
unhappiness, and unrest of the mothers and wives."
A few of the more adventurous women had accompanied their husbands to
hear the speaker, but they gave little sign of their approval or
disapproval of his sentiments. A week or two later Mrs. Burns called
at the agricultural office to see if the Representative would have
time, with all the community water-power demands, to help do
something for the children. Billy hoped he would have time.
Recollections of certain experiences of his own childhood on the
Swamp Farm had left his sympathies quick for any youngster suffering
possibly some of the same tribulations. Yet he knew the homes in the
neighborhood pretty well, and he knew that child-labor could not be
called an evil of the section, except in the backward crevices of the
hills, and in the best counties of the province there are "way-back"
places where a lot of evils go unmolested. Even on one of the leading
farms near the town, where the children of the family were perhaps
over cared for, there was a "Home-boy," stolid, stunted,
stupid-looking, who couldn't talk plain, and who went around with his
mouth open and a painful, bitter look about his eyes. Billy had
misgivings as to how things were going with him. He felt ready to
support any movement which Mrs. Burns might have in mind.
"You remember hearing that political speaker say that the woman on
the farm gave the world its sturdiest children?" she began. "Well,
after what I had seen in hospital work, and what I've seen right
around home, I wondered. Last week we had a doctor talk to us at the
Women's Institute, and he showed us that the tradition that children
brought up in the country are healthier than children brought up in
the city is all a lie. He showed us that while the death rate in the
cities has been going down steadily for the last ten years, in the
country it maintains a pretty straight line. The beginning of most of
it starts with the children. In the country we don't go to doctors or
dentists or oculists until the case gets desperate; it's a good deal
of trouble to go, and often the cost has to be considered. Most
people have never been taught that "little" things like enlarged
tonsils or bad teeth can become very serious.
"I was in a house the other day when one of the girls came home from
school crying with a toothache. She had been suffering for weeks, but
they said it was only a first tooth; it would soon come out itself.
She had never gone to a dentist in her life, and her front teeth were
so crooked as to be a disfigurement. If something isn't done soon
she will have to go through her whole life disfigured. It isn't fair.
"One of our neighbor's boys had always been considered stupid. The
teachers didn't know what was wrong with him; he just didn't grasp
things. He also made a great deal of amusement for the school by his
awkwardness; he couldn't walk across the room without bumping into
things. They have just by accident discovered that he's nearly blind.
The oculist can do a good deal for him even yet, but he can never
bring his sight back perfectly, and his school years have been
wasted. That could have been prevented.
"In a garden in our little village at home, a young woman with a
twisted back works all day with the flowers--they are the closest
friends she has. I've noticed that she is always there in the morning
and afternoon when the school children go past. They pick the flowers
through the fence and go on unrebuked, and I've seen her stand
watching them up the road, especially the little five-year-olds, with
tears in her eyes and a look almost rebellious. She won't ever have
any children, you see. And it's all because no one noticed the
curvature when it was just beginning and could have been
straightened. She was sent to school to sit in the same old painful
seat day after day so she might 'pass the entrance.'
"Just one other case. On the farm next ours, a girl with brown eyes
like a Madonna's, and the proverbial crown of red-gold hair, is
suffering everything from the consciousness of a cruel disfigurement.
When she was three years old an adenoid growth blocked the natural
breathing passage, and the only thing left for her to do was to keep
her mouth open and catch whatever air she could. Of course, the
result was that the upper jaw narrowed and the teeth protruded,
taking the character entirely away from the lower part of the face.
She kept having colds, and became so deaf that when she was about
grown up it was necessary to operate and remove the growth. Her
hearing came back pretty well, but the natural lines of her face will
never come back. An operation at the beginning would have changed her
whole life.
"Now we want to have a doctor come and examine the children in the
schools, and then if there's anything wrong we want to have a clinic
and get them taken care of. We don't know just how to go about it.
Will you help us?"
The Representative was not indifferent or pessimistic. He knew that
other Women's Institutes had engineered Medical Examination campaigns
in the public schools, that they had even held school clinics, and
brought a surgeon to operate on the youngsters who needed it, and he
knew that in some way the Department of Agriculture stood back of
them in the undertaking. That was as far as his interest had gone.
As for helping personally with the procedure, he would rather blunder
into a hornets' nest than get mixed up in the detail of a women's
organization. As usual, when he needed help, he thought of Ruth. She
would understand just how to map out the whole campaign. She was
working for the Department, and if Mrs. Burns would write, no doubt
they would send her. Of course, he would be pleased to give any
incidental help he could.
Ruth came and outlined the plan. The Institute would first have to
get the school board's consent to let them go on with the work. Then
they could get the local doctors to look the children over and see if
there were any suffering from the troubles that could be remedied. If
they could have a nurse to help with the inspection and to visit the
homes in a neighborly way and report what the kiddies needed, so much
the better. If they wanted to make the campaign of real, practical
help, they could hold a clinic and have the children actually
treated.
It was well on in December before the clinic could be arranged, and
the general excitement kept the telephones busy and caused
considerable delay in picking the geese for the Christmas market.
Mrs. Burns had offered to turn her house into a hospital for the day
and other members of the Institute were contributing supplies of
sheets and towels for the occasion. Mrs. Evison had dropped in at an
Institute meeting to express her delighted approval of the plan and
to say that her daughter would be pleased to drive their car all day,
if necessary, to fetch the children to and from the clinic. Billy
placed the Department of Agriculture's car at their service, praying
in secret that they wouldn't send him out alone with any of the
patients. A surgeon, young, but notoriously successful, was being
brought from the city, and Ruth was coming to help.
On the evening before the day of the clinic, when Billy was driving
home, he overtook the "Home boy" trudging up to the village to get
what little social color he could from the gossip of the regular
store roosters. He climbed into the car with his accustomed
sullenness--or what was generally considered sullenness. Billy knew
it was only a painful self-consciousness dulled a little by dragging
dog-tiredness. He was breathing audibly through his distorted mouth,
and his deafness gave a stupid look to his face.
"Why don't you come up to our Junior Farmers' meetings?" the
Representative began.
The boy didn't look up.
"They ain't for the likes of me," he said.
"Of course they are," the Representative declared, warmly. "What do
you mean?"
"Oh, I don't mean that your fellows are snobs," the boy admitted,
"but there's a difference, and you know it. They're used to being
out. They can make speeches and talk, and me--I can't talk."
Billy had never realized before how the boy's pride had suffered
through his affliction. He wondered if the school clinic would admit
him; or, what would be more difficult, whether he could persuade him
to go. He made the proposition as tactfully as he could.
"I don't belong there, neither," the boy replied. "I've never gone to
school, and, anyway, I ain't in the same class. I don't know any of
the folks except the men I meet at threshin's. Jim that come out here
the same time I did, it's different with him. At the place where he
works, they don't make much difference by him. But the folks at the
Home thinks if they once gets us out to what they call the 'green
country,' they've sort of landed us in 'eaven. Men send in for 'a boy
to do chores,' but we know it's a hired man they want. 'Course it's
different with Jim, but then I'm different to Jim. If you can't talk
an' you can't hear, an' your mouth hangs open, you can't expect folks
to want you around more-n-s necessary."
Billy had never tried so hard to argue anyone out of a mistaken idea.
His own experience had given him an insight into a boy's
sensitiveness at the time when life is opening a strange world to
him, and he needs a confidant, and he had not forgotten how the
"Representative" in his county at home had given him confidence. He
determined to stay right with this boy until he saw him past the
turning-place. When he let him out of the car at the store
rendezvous, he urged:
"Now, you'll come to-morrow and let them fix you up? I'll go with
you."
The boy eyed him shrewdly for a minute, then his face softened.
"I guess you're all right," he conceded. "I guess you wouldn't take
it as any trouble, but that's not sayin' what the others 'ud think.
I'll think it over. If I can bring myself to it, I'll call in an'
tell you before I go back."
In the office Billy sorted over his mail, and pushed it away. Some of
the letters dealt with marketing news that meant hundreds of dollars
gain or loss to the community; one carried a promise of a
co-operative creamery that had been one of his main ambitions for the
district--but these things didn't seem so important to-night. If the
clinic to-morrow could remove one boy's handicap and give him the
chance for life that Nature meant him to have, it would be worth more
than several reforms for more profitable farming. If he were not
taken care of now the chances were that he would never be. He decided
to walk over to the store and make sure of seeing him before he went
home. Then the phone called him.
"Oh, you _are_ there at last!" It was the soft little purring
tone that always set his pulses pounding. "Could you possibly run up
for a little while?"
"I'm afraid--" he began.
"But listen," she interrupted. "I'm going to help you to-morrow, you
know, and mother and I have some plans we'd like to talk over with
you. We're delighted that you're having such a distinguished surgeon
as Dr. Knight. It's really very unusual for him to go out of the city
at all, and we thought you wouldn't want him to go to the Village
Inn--it's quite impossible, you know, so mother thought you'd better
have him come here. Dad has met him, I think, and we'd be glad to
have him. Perhaps Miss McDonald would come, too, though she's so used
to going to all sorts of places."
"All right," he agreed, absently. "And you're going to help"--that
was the thing that impressed him. "That's fine."
"I'm going to drive the car all day," she announced, emphatically.
"That's fine," he said again. At last she was interested. Of course,
she couldn't resist the children--she was such a feminine bit of
creation.
"And I know you're going to say you have some state council or
something on to-night," she rattled along; then dropping her voice
appealingly, "I know I'm an awful nuisance, that I'm just hindering
you all the time, but I _do_ want you to-night. Was it anything
important?"
"Why, I wanted to see the boy who works at McGill's. I was wondering
if we could get him into the clinic to-morrow."
"Oh, I'm _sure_ we could. I'll get Mother to speak for him. I'm so
glad it was nothing urgent. I'll expect you, then. You'll hurry?"
Billy didn't exactly hurry. He walked up and down the office a few
times, looking more like swearing than his friends would have thought
possible. Then he remembered the confession, "I know I'm just
hindering your work all the time." Now, when she was beginning to be
interested, to even try to help, he was losing his temper over having
a plan of his own upset. He got ready to go--which took some
time--and on the way out he called at the store. They told him the
boy had gone.
When Billy drove his ambulance out to the Burns farm the next morning
and carried a little blanket-wrapped patient into the house, he found
Ruth already there. She was bending over a cot, evidently trying to
restore courage to a brave little fellow who was having a hard
struggle to keep the corners of his mouth from going down. The child
said something at last and her head went down beside him on the
pillow. There was an unsteady little gurgle of a laugh, so low and
deep and comrady that it made him shiver a little. He had heard the
little sob catch at the end of it and he was aware that it meant a
good deal. When she looked up and saw him she colored warmly, then
came straight to meet him in her frank, friendly way; but he thought
she left him very soon to go back to her work. He would have liked to
stay and watch her putting the children to bed. There was something
so strong and easy in the way she lifted them; something so clever
and steady in her supple hands--you could almost feel the touch in
watching them; something so close and reassuring in the way she held
the nervous ones. But his presence seemed to embarrass her, so he
went away.
He didn't see her again until evening. He had finished his part of
the day's programme, and had helped the doctor to pack away in the
long, deep-purring Evison car the patients who required the easiest
riding. He had never known Marjorie to be so adorable. She was
unnecessarily solicitous for the comfort of the children, and she
took orders from the doctor with a demure seriousness that was most
becoming. When he tucked the rugs about her as she started off with
her last convoy, she leaned down and whispered, "We're expecting you
for dinner. You'll bring the doctor--and Miss Macdonald, if she'll
come."
As she bent over the wheel in her red motoring outfit, with the wind
whipping a bright color in her cheeks, and her eyes dark and glowing,
she seemed like nothing so much as a brilliant scarlet tanager,
poised for flight. It was unreasonable, he reflected, to expect a
girl like that to conform to standards set for ordinary people. Her
heart was in the right place, however irresponsible she might seem
sometimes. How thoughtful she had been for the children.
In the house the women were clearing away the litter from the day's
work. Ruth was still busy. Her white uniform had lost some of its
crispness; her face was flushed; her hair was straying out from under
her nurse's cowl. It had been a busy day. She was testing the heat of
some irons on the stove when Billy came in.
"Are you nearly through?" he asked. "Is there anything I can do? I
want to take you to Evison's for dinner."
"I'm sorry," she said, "but we've just had another patient come in.
The doctor's operating now."
"And what are you going to do?"
"Iron his bed."
He smiled to think she knew the homely trick; then a sharp, pained
look crossed his face.
"My mother used to do that," he said.
She put the iron down and looked at him just as she had done when she
followed him home from his mother's funeral and heard him sob out his
agony for the things he couldn't help.
"I know," she said. "She did it for me once, too. I don't wonder that
you remember how good she was."
The little worried wrinkle had gone from between her eyes. In some
inexplicable way she seemed to be getting across to him the warmth of
her sympathy, and he felt for the first time the full wonder of it.
What a treasure would be there for some man to explore, and how blind
and ungrateful he had been all along. He had never done anything but
go to her for help. Even now she looked tired enough to go into
hysterics instead of troubling to think about him, and he felt he had
been nothing less than brutal. She was gathering up her irons.
"When you get that done will you come?" he begged. "We'll drive
around till you get rid of the ether you've been breathing all day. I
didn't think what I was getting you into."
"But, you see, it's a pretty bad case, and I'm going to stay all
night with the boy."
"Why can't some of his own people stay?"
"He hasn't any people, nor evidently any friends. He's a boy from the
Home, who works somewhere around. He came in alone at the last
minute, and you could see it had been pretty hard for him. We want
to make it as easy as we can."
She went away smiling, and Billy went out, bitterly ashamed of
himself. It had been hard for the boy to come, and he hadn't done
anything to help him.
An hour later the doctor came out.
"I suppose we're late," he grumbled. "I don't know whether to curse
that girl or go down on my knees and worship her. I'd had about
enough bad tonsils to-day without this last case, and there was no
reason under the sun why we should take an outsider like that in a
school clinic, but she held me right to it. Now she's going to see
him through the night."
The evening at Evison's held a new atmosphere for Billy. The elegant
luxury of the place seemed very restful after the crowded confusion
of the Burns home. Marjorie was unusually quiet and sweet and
dignified. She seemed even a little shy in the presence of the
notorious surgeon, listening with charming attention to all he said,
but saying little herself. However, the men talked, and they talked
to her and for her--Billy with his usual sincere interest; the doctor
with his clever way of unconsciously saying the most complimentary
things. It was quite possible that he had said them before, of
course, and quite probable that he would say them again and keep
right on saying them so long as people with grown-up daughters
continued to shower him with their hospitality. Several times she
caught Billy watching her with the sober tenderness that he always
dropped apologetically when she looked, but the doctor looked her
over with a daring admiration that might mean anything or nothing. It
was splendid to have Billy there, because whatever the doctor's
attitude might be, he couldn't help seeing that another man--a rather
exceptional man, too--was in earnest, and that meant a great deal for
a girl sometimes. Altogether, she felt that she was being a great
success.
Marjorie had an idea that men, at least men with a reputation, liked
to talk about themselves, and under cover of the general table
conversation, she confided to Dr. Knight that she thought it was
_wonderful_ to be able to do so much for people, especially for
"the little children." "When I see other people doing things like
that, I just wonder what I'm living for," she confessed, gravely, as
though she had just been awakened to the responsibility of existence
through his greatness. "It's simply unbearable to see people suffer
and do nothing to help them--especially the babies. Don't you think
it's rather hard to be a girl?"
"What about training for a nurse?" he suggested practically.
She hadn't expected anything like that, and she thought it was
scarcely kind of him. She looked appealingly at her mother.
"I guess Marjorie's a home girl," the mother explained, smiling with
indulgent pride at her daughter. "And, of course, her father wouldn't
think of letting her go away from home. She was at college two years
ago studying domestic science and she did enjoy that so much, but we
were completely lost without her. I guess we're rather selfish."
And the men both smiled across at her with the masculine equivalent
for her mother's expression. She had always found it most gratifying
to be admired by two men at the same time.
Of course, she was "a home girl," Billy thought, as he drove home.
Every little grace of her feminine personality proclaimed her made to
be taken care of, and how proud of her a man would be. He imagined
with some anxiety how hard it would go with her if she ever came to a
place where she wouldn't have the consideration they gave her at
home, and he found himself wondering just what manner of man this Dr.
Knight was, apart from his profession. When he had left them he was
turning her music and he had never known her to be so generous with
her playing. He wouldn't admit that he was jealous, but one of those
proverbial little clouds the size of a man's hand seemed to be
threatening his skies.
When he passed the Burns house he saw a dim light in an upstairs
window and was reminded bitterly again of his neglect of the Home
boy. However, Ruth would take care of him. He could see her shadow
moving against the blind now, and he thought how tired she must be.
He didn't know that her tiredness had gone, leaving something
infinitely more painful in its place.
Under the anesthetic the boy had mumbled something about the
"agricultural man" who had told him to come.
"Mr. Withers takes an interest in everything," Mrs. Burns had
remarked. "He's an exceptionally fine young man. There's just one
thing that's spoiling his work a little. He's very much in love with
Miss Evison. You can imagine how seriously he would take anything
like that, and it interferes with his work sometimes."
It was then that Ruth forgot her tiredness. She only ached for her
own room at home where she could be alone for a while.