His eyes went to the window where, in the hot sun of brilliant noonday, the moving tree-tops showed their densest green and the far mountains stood blue against a bluer sky. He looked doubtful for a moment, as though he had expected to find himself in his old home, in that room where the rain in the chimney had lulled him to sleep through childhood nights. When he remembered all that had happened since, would he shrink away again into that isolation he had made for himself? They could actually see, from the changes in his face, just how the flood of memories rose and swept over him, recalling everything, from his accident on the hill back to that day when he had vowed to shut the door of home behind him forever. At last he turned to his sister again and smiled.
“I thought I could never forgive all of you,” he said, “and it was you, this whole long time, who should have forgiven me. Through all these years I have been remembering how I went away, how I looked into that row of serious faces, and thought I read doubt in every one of them. Yes, Anna dear, I know you believed in me still; I know you called after me; but I vowed it was too late. I heard your voice as I closed the door: it has followed me ever since, but I would not listen. Can you forgive me?”
The girls slipped away and Dr. Minturn closed the door.
“He’ll do,” he said gruffly. “He won’t need any of us to cure him now.”
A man who has spent the last ten years in the free open and the bracing air of the Rocky Mountains does not linger long upon a sick bed when once he has begun to recover. John Herrick was sitting up in a week’s time and was able to limp about the house at the end of ten days. As his strength grew, so did Aunt Anna’s, so that step by step they came along the road of health together.
“Isn’t she wearing herself out nursing him?” Beatrice asked Dr. Minturn anxiously, but he only laughed.
“It never harms people to do what they like most in the world,” he answered. “I can hardly tell which of the two is getting well the faster. They have no further need for me, so I will be getting back to Miriam. I can leave the whole affair in your capable hands, Miss Beatrice.”
Beatrice laughed, yet flushed with pleasure that the doctor should voice such confidence in her. She could not help feeling a little thrill of pride when she thought how well things were turning out. Even the black mare was hobbling about the corral, giving promise that she could be ridden almost as soon as John Herrick would be able to mount her. There was still the affair in the village to be made clear, but of that Beatrice had thought very little lately, and not at all of Dabney Mills.
A growing restlessness on Christina’s part was the first reminder of what was going on about them.
“I don’t want to go,” she explained when, on Aunt Anna’s returning to the cabin, Christina announced that she was needed at home; “but I am anxious when I am away from Thorvik. I never know what new things he is thinking up.”