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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sed 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.

CHAPTER XI.

"_Not unto the forest, O my lover, O my lover, do not lead me to the forest.

Joy is where the temples are, lines of dancers swinging far, Drums and lyres and viols in the town, And the flapping leaves would blind me, and the clinging vines would bind me, And the th.o.r.n.y rose-boughs tear my saffron gown.

I will love you by the light, and the beat of drums at night, And the echoing of laughter in my ears, But I fear the forest._"

--_Greek Folk Song._

It was Christmas Eve. A soft, light snow had left the country white and downy as a young swan's breast. As if the feather padding of the road had m.u.f.fled the engine, the car cut along quietly as a boat, but the clear, cooing tones of the girl's voice carried far, and her laughter echoed back from the trees like the mimicry of some mischievous nymph. In the after calm of the year's first snowstorm the purity of the earth and air and sky gave the world that touch of unreality dear to poets and lovers, and Marjorie and Billy had come out in the late afternoon, as they often did on holidays and Sundays, to breathe for miles the air of the hills, to watch the lights of the city rush out through the dusk like streams of little racing fires, and to drive wherever fancy led them, stopping somewhere in town for supper and coming home slowly, very slowly and quietly in the dark.

"Let's take some road we don't know," the girl suggested. "Let's go over the hills, and then just when it's getting dark we'll come to the edge of the heights somewhere and coast right down into the city, like we did the first night you came here--do you remember?"

"Every second of it."

"That was in the spring. Even the town was half asleep and lazy after the winter's dissipation; to-night it will be as gay as a debutantes'

ball. In the country it was muddy and the fields and barns and fences stood out ugly and unashamed of themselves, like some old scrub-woman. Now the snow comes and gives her a new dress, you see, and here she is, a lady in white fox and diamonds. Wonderful, isn't it, what clothes will do? But underneath she's still the same old scrub-woman, the work-driven, squalid country. How I pity the people who have to stay here all their lives. Where are we going?"

Billy had turned up a new road, the winding, wooded avenue leading to the place on the hill. He had felt that if she could ever see its beauty it would be to-day, with the glow of the sun still pink above the cedars jagging the horizon, and the early moon making sharp shadows and glittering open s.p.a.ces on the snow. Her last burst of sympathy for the people who had to live in the country was not encouraging, but he was so filled with the spell of it all himself that it seemed as though he must fire her with some of his enthusiasm.

At the crest of the hill the car stopped and he told her to look.

There was nothing tangible to see but a deep expanse of level whiteness with a windbreak of black pines at the back, and one tall gnarl-limbed maple sheltering the remains of a ruined old house. She looked about blankly and asked:

"What is it?"

He smiled. "There's isn't much to see, yet," he said, "but I've always wanted to show you this place. I think it could be made a little heaven and I want to buy it. I can just see what it would be like on a night like this with the light shining from the windows and the sparks from the fireplace shooting right up to the sky, and inside----"

"But it would cost an awful lot to fix it up and when you did get it done it would be so far from everywhere. But then you like to be away off from people and towns, don't you?"

"It wouldn't matter what I liked. A man can make his home anywhere; I suppose something of the savage in him likes to get out to the wild places. You think this is lonesome, then? It seems the beginning of an Eldorado to me. Listen to the trees. On the stillest days you can hear those pines starting up with a low, cooing little shiver, growing louder and louder till you'd think there was a forest of them. It can be the sleepiest or the thrilliest sound in the world, I think."

"To me they sound like someone crazy, crying. Let's go." She shivered, crept deeper into her furs and consulted her little French wrist-watch. "Do you know it's getting late?" she finished a little wearily.

Then when the car had started she moved up closer--it was one of the trifling signs that always set him piling up the robes again, and scarcely above a whisper she confided:

"I'm sorry I don't like your place. I remember, when I was very small, the little boy who played with me came one day to see my new play-house. It was the dream of my heart--up to that time--expressed in wood and paint and wonderful miniature furnishings, and I did so want him to like it. But he came and looked it over for a long time, frowning, with his hands in his pockets, just like a man. Then he said, 'I don't like it. It's too sissy,' and he walked right away.

But when I cried, he came back and he said, 'I don't like your house, but that isn't saying I don't like you, and 'cause you're a girl, I guess maybe I like you better 'cause you like a house like that.' ...

You understand, don't you, Billy?"

She was rather startled by the intense searching that suddenly came into his steady eyes. His right hand was leaving the wheel and she wasn't ready for this. She laughed gaily to break the tension, and finished her parable.

"I believe I had almost made you forget that we're grown up. Things aren't nearly so simple as when we lived in play-houses, are they?"

"Heavens, no," he agreed, and went back to the wheel.

To hide the shock of the sudden contact with earth after his insane flight he turned his attention to the car, inquiring lightly:

"Shall we fly for a mile or two? There aren't any speed laws here, nor many living things to run over. It's one of the advantages of a place as wild as this, that you can do just as you like."

So they raced against the wind, the girl looking ahead to catch the first glow of the city lights, and Billy staring blindly at the road and hearing the crying of the pines waiting for a house and warmth and light and life to shelter. He was beginning to accept the haunting suspicion that it wasn't just the fear for the hard, lonely places that was responsible for the girl's indifference, but that all his constant, ardent reaching out for her had failed absolutely to awaken anything deeper than a pa.s.sing delight in being courted. Some unaccountable flash of disillusionment made him wonder if she was capable of anything more than this weak, kittenlike playfulness, and as quickly he cursed himself for being an unchivalrous cad, and came to, with all his usual interest.

They were not strangers to the most select cafes in town, and they found a table in a corner close to a blazing fire, half screened from the crowd, but where a panel mirror reflected all the gaiety of the place. They made a very human little pantomime, these pleasure-seekers--over-made-up women with bloated, sated-looking men; gay young college crowds, glowing and noisy, trooping in from an afternoon on the ice; engaged couples making the most of one of the rare celebrations which the limits of their purses and the needs of the half-furnished nest would allow, and other less elated, but obviously more comfortable, men and women whom one could spot immediately as having left the baby with a grandmother and come here to s.n.a.t.c.h a respite from family ties, only to fly happily back to them again and ask, "After all what did we ever see to prize so much in what we called our liberty?"

At odd moments Billy found himself prospecting their cases in the light of his own ambitions; most of the time he was unconscious of any presence in the room other than the girl sitting opposite him. He was also proudly aware of other admiring glances in her direction. It was the same dazzling attraction that had made her so popular at dances and house-parties almost before she was grown up. The wild rose color in her cheeks, the gold in her crinkling hair, the bits of just the right shade of an amethyst gown peeping out from her white furs, and the wonderful little hat that had evidently been the breast of a bird--all had their part in the effect. More compelling still were the wavering blue eyes with their little brown specks. They seemed very mysterious and bright and childishly troubled to-night, but that was because she was searching the crowd to see if there might be "anyone she knew."

Coming back from one of these explorations she suddenly seemed to remember that she owed some attention to Billy. Without thinking much she inquired gaily:

"When you go out to your farm are you still going to come in here sometimes to celebrate?"

"Every Christmas Eve anyway. You don't think I expect to make a hermitage of the farm, do you?"

"I didn't know. It's so hard for me to get your viewpoint." The tone implied that she would give worlds to acquire the art of getting his viewpoint. Then, lest his courage should surprise her again, she rattled on:

"And you will say to your wife, 'The girl who taught me to like these things couldn't have made a pound of b.u.t.ter to save her life'."

He didn't laugh and he didn't play up to her banter as he generally did. He looked away from her, and she knew he was angry. She leaned forward, but failed to get his attention; then she called softly:

"Billy----"