"Then you aren't really educated at all?" said the teacher with frank pity. "What a shame! Education is so important."

Benis was frankly afraid of her.

"But you need not be," Desire a.s.sured him. "She looks up to you. She thinks that, being a professor, you have even more education than she has."

"G.o.d forbid!" said Benis devoutly.

"Besides, she knows all about you. I found out today that she is an Ontario girl. And she lives--guess where? In Bainbridge!"

Aunt Caroline (they were at dinner) looked up from her roast lamb and remarked "Impossible."

"But she does, Aunt. She says so."

Aunt Caroline fancied that probably the young person was mistaken.

"Certainly," she said, "I have never heard of her."

"She lives," said Desire, "on Barker Street and she took her first cla.s.s teacher's certificate at Bainbridge Collegiate Inst.i.tute."

Aunt Caroline fancied that they gave almost anyone a certificate there.

All one had to do was to pa.s.s the examinations. As to Barker Street--there was a Barker Street, certainly. And this young person might live on it. She, herself, was not acquainted with the neighborhood.

"But she knows you," Desire persisted. "She said, 'Oh, is Miss Caroline Campion your Aunt? I remember her from my youth up.'"

"Very impertinent," said Miss Campion. Her nephew's eyes began to twinkle.

"Oh, everyone knows Aunt Caroline," he explained. "But then, everyone knows the Queen of England."

Aunt Caroline was mollified. "Of course, in that sense--" She felt able to go on with her roast lamb.

Dr. Rogers, who had listened to this interchange with delight, said now that the young lady had been quite right about her place of residence.

She did live in Bainbridge, on Barker Street. He did not know her personally but her older sister was a patient of his. The mother and father were dead. Very nice, quiet people.

Desire was quite young enough to laugh and to point this with "Dead ones usually are."

The school teacher, at another table, heard the laugh and felt a pa.s.sing sense of injustice. It seemed unfair that anyone so obviously without education could feel free to laugh in that satisfying way. It was plain that young Mrs. Spence scarcely realized her sad deficiency.

And it certainly was a little discouraging that the cleverest men almost invariably....

Fort William came and pa.s.sed and in the sparkling sunshine of another morning the train dashed into the wild Superior country where the wealth lies under the rock instead of above it. To Desire, her first glimpse of the Great Lake was like a glimpse of home. The coolness of the air was grateful after prairie heat but, scarcely had she welcomed back the smell of pine and fir, before it, too, was left behind and they swung swiftly into a softer land--a land of rolling fields and fences and farmhouses; of little towns, with tree-lined roads; of streams less noisy and more disciplined; of fat cows drowsy in the growing heat.

"This," said Aunt Caroline with a breath of proprietary satisfaction, "is Ontario."

Desire, always literal, pointed out that according to the map in the time-table, they had been in Ontario for some considerable time.

Aunt Caroline thought that the map was probably mistaken. "For," she added with finality, "it was certainly not the Ontario to which I have been accustomed."

This settled the matter for any sensible person.

"We are nearly home now," she went on kindly. "I hope you are not feeling very nervous, my dear."

"I am not feeling nervous at all," said Desire with surprise.

Fortunately Aunt Caroline took this proof of insensibility in a flattering light.

"Yes, yes," she said. "It is not, of course, as if you were arriving alone. You can depend upon me entirely. John, are you sure that your car will be in waiting?"

"I wired it to wait," grinned John. "And usually it's a good waiter."

"Because," said Aunt Caroline, "we do not wish to be delayed at the station. If Eliza Merry weather is there, the quicker we get away the better. I am determined that she shall be introduced to Desire exactly when other people are and not before. Please remember that, Benis.

Introduce Desire to no one at the station. I think, my dear, we may put on our hats."

"It's an hour yet, Aunt."

"I know, but I do not wish to be hurried."

Desire put on her hat. It was because she was always willing to give Aunt Caroline her way in small matters that she invariably took her own in anything that counted. It is a simple recipe and recommended to anyone with Aunts....

"There's Potter's wood!" said Benis, who had been somewhat silent.

Desire looked out eagerly. But Potter's wood was just like any other wood and--

"There's Sadler's Pond!" said John.

"They've cut down the old elm!" Aunt Caroline voiced deep displeasure.

"And put up a bill-board," said Benis.

Desire felt a trifle lonely. These people, so close to her and yet so far away, were going home.

"Oh, how I wish you weren't stopping off," said the rancher's wife, an actual tear on her flushed cheek. "You've been so kind, Mrs. Spence.

And anyone more understanding with children I never saw. When you've got a boy like my Sandy for your own--"

"By jove!" exclaimed Benis. "They're starting to cut down Miller's hill at last."

Aunt Caroline rose flutteringly. "There is the water-tank," she announced in an agitated voice. "Desire, where is your parasol? My dear, don't kiss that child again, it's sticky. WHERE is my hand-bag?

John, do you see your car?"

"I don't SEE it," admitted John, "but--"

"Bainbridge!" shouted the brakeman.

CHAPTER XIX

Desire was conscious of a brown and gabled station with a bow-window and flower-beds, a long platform where baggage trucks lumbered, the calling of taxi-men, a confused noise of greeting and farewell, and Aunt Caroline's voice uncomfortably near her ear.

"There she is!" whispered Aunt Caroline hoa.r.s.ely. "Be careful! Don't look!"