And the girl learned what a day in the woods could be—sun pouring through the parting branches and warming at every touch; brown furry things scuttling off through the dead leaves; here and there a mother partridge strutting out watchful and wary, and whirring close, broken-winged, at sight of them, to lead her brood to cover; stillness like the stillness of an abbey, broken only by the distant drumming of a woodpecker on a hollow tree. And always there was Billy—his sleeve just touching when the path was narrow, his hand so quick and steady when the rocks were slippery. And once, when at the sound of the faintest chirping in a thicket he had stolen over and reached out for her to come and look at a nest of the downiest yellow fledgelings, in the breath-holding wonder of it her fingers had somehow tightened convulsively about his. The birds had done it, of course; but they came home very quietly after that.
But when he left her he said: “There’s just one thing more. Will you try to forget me as you must think of me now, and let me try all over again when I come back? You’ve been no end
kind always—I won’t presume on it—but when I come back, if you can stand to have me around at all, I’m going to try to make you love me. And I’m going to keep on trying. And if you ever find you can marry me I’ll keep right on after that—and if you can’t—it’ll be all right. Until I come back, we’ll just go right on being pals like we have been? So I can write to you and know you’re here, like a warm fire to reach out to when there seems to be no warmth anywhere else. Talk about men protecting women! We’re as left as deserted children, when things go wrong, without a woman we can trust, somewhere.”
Ruth’s aunt came in to comfort her when he had gone.
“You’re going to miss Mr. Withers,” she said. “He is a flower of a man. But I’m going to tell you something. You’ve never had much to do with men; you seem to have always been too busy with your work, and I’ve been sorry about it; but as things are turning out now it may be as well. Some of our men won’t come back; many of those who do come back will be changed. Mr. Withers is naturally likeable; he will be made much of socially, and there’s the question of how much of it he can stand. I believe he was a great admirer of that pretty Miss Evison, which is really not a strong argument for his ability to
take care of himself. I’m glad now that you have so much of interest in your career.”
CHAPTER XIV.
It was very quiet in the neighborhood after the battalion left. Over the whole green country always known as a retreat from the strain and noise and gaiety of the town, there brooded a quiet that was not restful. Canada was far removed from the areas where every home had been broken, but in the littlest hamlet or the most secluded community there was some home with a cloud hanging over. When Ruth’s work took her among these people now, she felt a closer touch with their anxiety; she hadn’t known what it meant before.
It was in a Scotch settlement in Eastern Ontario that the real spirit of the war seemed to have entered. She had visited the place during the winter before the war, and the meeting-hall had been filled with young people. They were an interesting crowd—the young men, hardened from summers of harvesting and winters of lumbering, every one of them standing six feet or over, not all modelled after Adonis, but generally bearing unmistakable marks of good breeding and intelligence in their strong-featured faces. It had long been the ambition of every family to turn out at least one university man, if it ran