When she was three years old an adenoid growth blocked the natural breathing pa.s.sage, 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 Inst.i.tutes 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 Inst.i.tute 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 Inst.i.tute were contributing supplies of sheets and towels for the occasion. Mrs. Evison had dropped in at an Inst.i.tute 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 sn.o.bs," 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 cla.s.s. 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 ch.o.r.es,' 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 rea.s.suring in the way she held the nervous ones. But his presence seemed to embarra.s.s 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.