Ethan hummed the old song under his breath.
“Oh!” the Indian girl burst out at last, with something of the old frank impetuosity. “Do you know, Ethan, I seem to be two people again, just as in those first months in Laurel, when you teased me about having so many names”—(Ethan gently shook his head). “I’m pulled two ways at once; I so want to really belong, and I can’t tell where I belong! I know, now, that I can’t do for my people what I once thought I could, here on the reservation; and yet, isn’t it my place? I wonder what the Bishop would say.”
“Well, what did he say?” sturdily responded Ethan.
“He did—yes, he did tell me once I had better go back for more training—to learn to be a nurse.”
“Well, isn’t taking care of Miss Sophia pretty good training? I believe that just now, at any rate, you belong with her,” he answered promptly, with a masculine finality that steadied her swimming thoughts. “A lonely, loveless old woman needs you; you are all she has. Come home, dear; come home!”
“Blue Earth told me yesterday that she’s going to be married again—to Moses Blackstone. She won’t need me any more,” half laughed, half sobbed the girl, recalling the dumb pleading that had so irritated her in those eyes of Moses’. She was all woman—our little Stella, and the personal note would not be denied. “It can’t be just yet, of course; I must take a month or two to wind up everything; but—yes—I’ll come!”
They had turned their backs upon the tiny, primitive village, and were facing the eastern horizon, remote and lovely in the transforming after-glow.
“And you graduate from the medical college when, Ethan? Isn’t it next year? Are you really going to settle down in Laurel?”
“Doctor Brown is anxious to divide his practice, but I haven’t given him my answer yet,” responded Ethan, his serious eyes upon the soft, averted cheek that had at last begun to burn with a delicate consciousness.