“Or you, either, David.”
And for David that little speech from Ruth put the crown upon a glorious day. The study bell rang and summoned him, but for some minutes after he was seated at his desk his mind was elsewhere than on his books; his eyes saw, not the printed page, but the girl in white standing by the gate and looking up at him with her honest, friendly eyes.
It was a pleasant and happy summer vacation that David passed. He was gratified to find that Ralph had grown in strength and athletic promise, and he complimented him with fraternal frankness on the fact that he had acquired more sense. His mother seemed to grow younger; at any rate, she was more cheerful than when he had last seen her; only occasionally did the look of sadness and of longing for the past come into her eyes.
They spent a month camping in the woods on the shore of a lake; Maggie went with them, though she protested that she did not see why they wanted to leave a nice, tidy little apartment and run wild like the Indians. She made that protest to Mrs. Ives and to Ralph, not to David. Somehow she could not feel quite so free and easy with David as formerly; he was not any longer just a boy. He had grown older and bigger, and involuntarily Maggie found herself treating him with a deference almost like that which she had been accustomed to observe toward his father. To be sure, before the summer was over a good part of that constraint wore off; but she never again could open her heart to him in full and whole-souled criticism as in the old days.
For Mrs. Ives the ideal that Dr. Wallace had embodied was shattered. David laughed to see how much she begrudged the grateful thoughts that she had entertained toward the distinguished surgeon through all those months.
“You know, he didn’t commit a wrong, mother, in not sending me back to St. Timothy’s,” David reminded her. “You seem almost to feel that he’s done us an injury.”
“No, of course not, David, but it does make me cross to think of all the feelings I’ve had about him, and he never caring in the least! And all the time I never once thought of that good, kind, poor Mr. Dean!”
From Mr. Dean came letters; he was passing the summer in Boston, getting instruction in a school for the blind. “Interesting, but not very encouraging,” he wrote. “If I were younger, perhaps I shouldn’t be so stupid. But I’ve made some progress, and perhaps next year I shall find that the lack of sight is not so troublesome.”
As David’s vacation drew to a close, his mother became again subdued and wistful. She talked hopefully, she was glad that Mr. Dean had intimated his intention to prepare David for the career that the boy’s father had intended, but she could not readily resign herself to the wrench of another parting.