“I don’t expect there will be any necessity for that. As soon as it is known through the neighbourhood that a doctor is in residence, all sorts of needs will be cropping up, and instead of your neighbours falling ill in order to give you employment, it is much more likely that they will have to turn to and nurse the patients who are brought from a distance and dumped upon your hands to repair.”
“Ah, that is a good idea. I hadn’t thought of bringing the mountain to Mohammed in that fashion,” he said quickly. “Of course, if there is no doctor in the neighbourhood there would be no hospital either, and one would be as necessary as the other in a wild district like this.”
“Quite as necessary,” she answered. “They have terrible accidents at the mines sometimes, and there is nowhere for the poor fellows to be taken care of, so they have to lie in their miserable shelters, which are not worth the name of huts, until they get better, or die.”
“Ah, it would be uphill work, I dare say; but plainly there is room for me here, and that is the main thing I wanted to know,” he said, drawing a deep breath.
“There is always room in Canada, I think, for everyone,” she answered, with a touch of land-pride in her tone.
“There ought to be, for it is big enough,” he said. Then he was silent for a long time, looking out of the window with an absorbed gaze, which, however, saw nothing of the scenery through which they were passing. Presently he roused himself with a start, and, turning towards her again, said, in a courteous manner, “My name is Russell—Charles Russell; would you mind telling me yours?”
“I am Gertrude Lorimer,” she said simply; adding, with a blush, “but my home is not at Bratley, although I live there when I am at work. I am the telegraph operator at the depot.”
He bowed, thanked her, and would have taken Sonny into his own arms then; but the child sleepily protested, clinging fast to his comfortable resting-place and refusing to be moved.
“Please let him stay. I have brothers of my own as young as Sonny, and it has been a great wrench to leave them,” she said, looking up at him; but quickly dropping her gaze again, because her eyes were swimming with tears.
He made no further attempt to take the child then, understanding as if by instinct that there was some pain behind of which she could not speak.