“When your father broke down,” he continued, “I longed to take you all home and look after you. I was amply able to do it and he is my oldest and best friend. I would have done it, too, if you girls had not astonished me by displaying so much courage and such a determination to fight your own battles that I could only stand aside and watch you work out your own salvation.”
“You have made the way easier all the time,” said Julie tremulously.
The Doctor cleared his throat.
“I have been so glad to share a bit of the responsibility, but now my faithful little comrades want to shoulder it all.”
“Oh, Dr. Ware, you don’t think—” began Hester impulsively.
“Yes, I do think,” he interrupted, “that you have the right idea and whatever my personal inclination may be, I like your spirit of independence and it shall be as you say.”
Hester flung her arms about his neck and kissed him. “Do you know,” she said brokenly, “Julie and I are getting so puffed up with conceit over our business prosperity that presently you will disown us altogether.”
“Shall I?” holding her fast. “What do you think, Julie?” with a searching gaze into the face of the older girl who stood a little apart from them.
Julie flushed and turned her eyes away—tell-tale eyes like hers were not to be trusted. “I think,” she said with a supreme effort to speak calmly, “I think we had better go upstairs for tea. Miss Ware will be wondering what has become of us.”
When the Doctor learned that tea was brewing in the library he followed them upstairs and electrified his sister by handing about tea and taking a cup himself with as much complacency as if he were in the habit of dawdling around a tea-table every afternoon of his life. Miss Ware wished he hadn’t come, for she had intended to ply the girls with questions about their work; questions which in the presence of her brother she hesitated to ask, standing, as she did, in considerable awe of him. She did manage, while he was talking to Hester, to catechise Julie a little, but that young woman’s answers were so evasive, yet withal so sweetly polite that Miss Ware felt very much as if she were hitting a rubber ball, which, while showing the imprint of her attack, bounded back every time to the starting point. It happened also that Dr. Ware having some notion of what his sister might be up to, rescued Julie from too prolonged a tête-à-tête and with infinite tact kept the conversation in such general channels that personalities were forgotten and Miss Ware quite shone in her desire to be agreeable. There are many persons who, given their own conversational way, manage in the course of an hour to reduce to a state of irritation every person in the room, yet who, guided and steered by a stronger force, rise to the best that is in them and produce such a favorable impression that one wonders how one ever thought them other than agreeable. It was thus with Miss Ware, who under the guidance of her brother, appeared to the girls in a new light, and she herself had the unusual sensation of regretting that they had taken so early a departure.