In her few steps lead of him the girl stopped suddenly and turned around.
"But of what good is it that I should understand?" she asked with a little appealing gesture of her hands. "In my far Norway is it not that I have still the cause of the little brother? And here?" she puzzled, "How could I yet leave Elizabeth?"
"Elizabeth?" questioned the Young Doctor. 158
"Mrs. Tome Gallien," explained the girl.
"Elizabeth?" repeated the Young Doctor with increasing astonishment. "You mean you are such friends as that?"
"Yes," nodded the girl. "I am such friends as that."
Across the lovely earnestness of her face sun and shadow flickered intermittently. Softly her blue eyes brooded. Her bright gold hair was like a flame. In all that sunny, singing island there was no radiance like her unless perhaps it was the blue bird who flashed through the gray moss just beyond her.
"I cannot leave the little brother," she said. "Nor can I leave the Elizabeth." As though kindled by the spring's own sweet her whole musing face flamed suddenly with joy. "Nor yet.—I am so greedy!" she cried, "nor yet can I leave you!"
All unbeknown then to Mrs. Tome Gallien or even to Martha, they crept up the stairs at last to Mrs. Tome Gallien's room, where with the poor Young Doctor relegated ignominiously behind her, Solvei chose for her own whimsical purposes to make her dramatic entrance. 159
"Good afternoon to you, then, Elizabeth!" she hailed casually to the impatient Sick Woman on the bed. "This of a surety is