"NOW WHAT HAVE YOU TO SAY?" HE DEMANDED
"All day long, I think. I remonstrated with her once ten or fifteen years ago when she had a touch of pleurisy. 'Mrs. Turner,' I said, 'if you persist in smoking, you'll injure your health and die young.' She was then eighty-something. 'Doctor,' said she, with a twinkle in those bright little eyes of hers, 'I'll live to be a hundred, and that's more than you'll do.' And, bless me, I think she will! To-day she sent word for me to 'look in.' That means that she needs gossip and not medicine. Well, I'm glad to go. It always does me good to talk with Mother Turner. She's the best lesson in contentment I know. She's buried two husbands, seven children, and the dear Lord only knows how many grandchildren, she lives on charity and hasn't a soul near her she can claim relationship to, and she's as cheerful as that oriole up there, and almost as bright. The pathetic part of it is that she can't read any more, although she puts on her spectacles and pretends that she can. Three years ago she confided to me that her eye-sight was 'failing a bit.' She's not blind yet, by any means, but print's beyond her. And so when I see her she always gets me to read to her a little, explaining that her eyes 'be a bit watery this morning.' Sometimes it's the Bible, but more often it's a newspaper that some one has left. Just now her hobby is airships. She can't hear enough about airships." The Doctor chuckled. "She's been on a train but once in her life, she tells me, and that was thirty years ago."
"I don't want to live that long," said Eve thoughtfully. "I don't want to live after every one I've cared for has gone."
"So you think now," replied the Doctor, with a faint shrug of his shoulders, "but wait till you are old. I've seen many snuffed out, my dear, but there's only one or two I recall who went willingly. The love of life is a strong passion. Bless my soul, what's that?"
The Doctor turned toward the lilac hedge and the neighboring cottage, listening. Eve laughed, merrily.
"Why, that's Zephania," she said.
"'We shall sleep, but not forever,
There will be a glorious dawn!
We shall meet to part, no, never,
On the resurrection morn!'"
sang Zephania, in her piping voice. The Doctor smiled. Then he nodded sideways in the direction of the voice.
"Have you seen our host this morning?" he asked.
"No," said Eve.
"I wonder," he chuckled, "if I hadn't better go over and administer a bromide. These fashionable dinner-parties—" He shook his head eloquently.
"I don't believe he's that bad," responded Eve. "I wish you'd tell me what you think of him, Doctor."
"Mr. Herrick? Well, aside from his intemperance—"
"No, I'm in earnest, please. Afterwards I'll tell you why I ask—perhaps."
"I think him a very nice young man, Miss Eve, don't you?"
"Ye-es."
"I wouldn't call him strictly handsome; he doesn't remind me of the copper-engraved pictures of Lord Byron, who, when I was a lad, was considered the standard of masculine beauty, but he looks like a man, which is something that Byron didn't, to my thinking."
"But do you—do you think he's sincere?"
"Lord, bless me, yes! I'd stake my word on his being that if nothing else."
"Even if he is a mining man?" asked Eve, with a smile.
"H'm, well, I guess there are honest mining men as well as honest lawyers."
"Yes, I think he's honest," said Eve, thoughtfully, "but as to sincerity—"
"Aren't they the same?"
"Perhaps they are," answered Eve, doubtfully. She was silent for a moment, possibly considering the question. Then she looked across at the Doctor with a little flush in her cheeks. "You see," she said, "he—he's asked me to marry him."
The Doctor rolled his cane under his palms and nodded his head slowly several times. Eve waited. At last—
"You don't seem much surprised," she said, questioningly.
"Surprised? No. I'd have been surprised if he hadn't asked you to marry him, my dear. It's what I'd have done in his place."
"And I'd have accepted you," said Eve with a little laugh.
"And him?" asked the Doctor.
Eve was silent, looking across the garden. Finally she shrugged her slim shoulders and sighed.
"I don't know," she said, frankly.
"Well," began the Doctor, slowly and judicially. Then he stopped, wondering what he had started to say.
"Why should I?" challenged Eve, a trifle querulously.
"You shouldn't, unless you feel that you want to."
"But I don't know whether I want to—or don't want to."
The Doctor studied her face a moment, until her eyes dropped and the flush deepened in her cheeks. Unseen of her, he smiled.
"Take plenty of time to find out," said the Doctor, softly and kindly. "Don't marry him until you are sure that you can't be happy without him, my dear. Don't try it as an experiment. That's what makes unhappy marriages; at least, that's one thing. There are others too numerous to mention. There's just one reason why a man and a woman should join themselves together in matrimony, and that is love, the love that the poets sing and the rest of us poke fun at, the love that is the nearest thing to Heaven we find on earth." The Doctor sat silent a moment, looking past the girl's grave face into the green blur of the garden. Then he stirred, sighed, and looked at his watch. "Well, well, I must be on my way," he said briskly. "I'm a vastly busy old man."
"But, Doctor, you haven't helped me a bit to decide," she said, aggrievedly.
"I can't, my dear. No one can. And, what's more, you don't want me to."
"Why, Doctor, I"—she began. Then she dropped her eyes and a little smile trembled at her lips. "How do you know?" she asked.
"I know a few things yet, Miss Eve," he chuckled, picking up his old black leather bag.
"Just a moment, please," begged Eve. "Did he ever tell you that he wanted me to take some of Cousin Edward's money?"
"M'm, yes, he did tell me that," responded the Doctor cautiously. "But that's nothing against him."
"N-no, I know it isn't. And he said—says he will have his way."
The Doctor settled his hat and gripped his stick.
"Then I guess he will. He looks that kind of a man."
"He never will," said Eve, firmly, "never!"
"Unless," chuckled the Doctor, "you marry him." He waved his cane and strode away toward the gate. "How about that?" he called back over the hedge.
Eve made no answer. She was thinking very busily. "Unless I marry him!" she repeated, somewhat blankly, staring at the turquoise ring which she was slipping around and around on her finger. The moments passed. A frown crept into her forehead and grew there, dark and threatening, under the warm shadow of her hair. "And so that's it," she thought bitterly and angrily. "That's what it means. That's why he's acted so strangely since—since he asked me to marry him. It's just a trick to get his own way. He'd marry me as a sop to his conscience. It's just the money, after all. Oh, I wish—I wish Cousin Edward had never had any money!"
She sat there a long time, while the shadows shortened and the birds grew silent, one by one, and the noonday hush fell over the old garden; sat there until Miss Mullett came to the kitchen door and summoned her to luncheon.
