“Now look!” said she.
He did look, but he saw nothing but the front of Dr. Hunter’s neat little house.
“I don’t see anything,” he said.
She opened the gate, and he followed her along the path and up on the veranda.
“Look at that!” she said.
It was nothing but the usual sign in the window. “Noel”—but it wasn’t! In blue letters on a white ground was printed:
JUDITH HUNTER, M.D.
VI
“You see,” she said, a little later, when they were in the library, “Noel and I were left orphans when we were very young, and Aunt Katherine Carew took care of us. I couldn’t begin to tell you all she did, all the sacrifices she made. Naturally, it was Noel, the boy, that she hoped and expected most from. I wanted to study medicine, and poor Noel couldn’t make up his mind exactly what he wanted to do; so he chose that, too, and we studied together. It was a terrible strain for Aunt Katherine. It took almost all she had, and after we’d both left the hospital, she couldn’t possibly set up two young doctors. We talked it over, and it was my idea to give him his chance first. He’s two years older, and—well, I thought I could wait. Poor Aunt Katherine couldn’t manage everything herself, and we couldn’t afford a servant, and yet she felt that it was very important to keep up appearances; so I decided that I would be the servant. I intended to be invisible until I was ready to appear as a full-fledged M.D. myself.” She paused, and smiled a little. “We both worked very hard to make a doctor of Noel,” she went on. “I think now that we tried a little too hard. If he hadn’t felt that so much was expected of him, he might have gone through with it.”
“He may do better where he is,” said Alan.