"As sure as any one can be about any operation," he answered. "He has everything in his favor; there is the clean life he has always led, back of him; his splendid constitution, the fine aseptic air of these hills. Everything is favorable. The paralysis and all the other trouble was caused by one thing. We have removed the cause, and I see no reason why he should not recover completely in time. He has rallied from the anesthetic, and is so happy over the result, so buoyantly hopeful, that that of itself, with his dogged determination to get well, will go a long distance toward pulling him through."
The tears were rolling down Mary's cheeks, but she did not know it, nor did she know that her face was ashine at the same time with the inward light of a joy too great for telling.
"To think that he'll be able to walk again!" she exclaimed over and over, as if trying to grasp the greatness of such a fact. "And you did it! Oh, Doctor Tremont! There isn't anything good enough in heaven or earth, for the hand that could bring a happiness like that to my brother Jack!"
As she tried brokenly to express her gratitude, and the good old doctor tried as hard to deny any obligation on her part, saying he had only partly squared himself with the Wares, Phil slipped away. The scene was coming near to upsetting his own equanimity. Besides he had some telegrams to send. There were three and save for the address they were identically the same:
"Operation successful. Every reason to expect complete and rapid recovery."
Stuart Tremont received his just as he was driving in at the gate of his country place. A messenger boy on a wheel handed him the yellow envelope. He hurried into the house, catching up little Patricia, and swinging her to his shoulder as she ran to meet him. Eugenia was coming down the stairs.
"Good news!" he cried boyishly. "Hurrah for Daddy! He's brought the year of jubilee to the Ware family, root and branch."
"To say nothing of the professional laurels he has added to the house of Tremont," Eugenia answered. "Sometimes I'm tempted to wish you hadn't followed in his footsteps, Stuart, and chosen such a hard life. But when I think what just one cure like that means, I wouldn't have you anything else in the world than what you are, for all the kingdoms of the earth. Oh, I'm so glad for all of them! Joyce will be nearly wild with joy. She has been so broken up over Jack's condition ever since the accident, that now her happiness will be something good to see. I must try to go in to the city for a short call before we start West."
Joyce's happiness was good to see. When her telegram came she was starting out of the studio on her way to an interview with the art editor of a magazine that had published one of her sketches. She could not turn back because the appointed hour was too near at hand and the interview too important. So she stood in the corridor after she left the elevator, wiping away her happy tears until she was composed enough to go out on the street. And because she had to share her good news with some one, she told the janitor's wife. The hearty sympathy of that motherly Irish woman sent her away as if she were treading on air.