Robert’s father had died five months before and his mother, a rather frivolous young widow, who had always cared more for society than for her home, had placed her sixteen-year-old son in a military academy and had departed for Paris to try to forget her loss in the gay life of that city, but Robert had been unable to forget, and day after day he had grieved for that father who had been his pal ever since he could first remember. These two had been often alone as the wife and mother had spent much time at week-end house-parties in the country places of her wealthy friends. No wonder was it that the boy felt that he had lost his all.
At last, worn with the grief which he kept hidden in his heart, his health had broken and a cablegram from his mother had bidden him go with a nurse to their California home at San Seritos, adding, that if he did not recover in one month, she would return to the States, but since it was only the beginning of the gay season in Paris, she did hope that he would endeavor to get well as soon as possible.
The lad had read the message with a lack of interest and to the attending physician he had said: “Kindly cable my mother to remain in France as I am much better, but that I shall stay in California for the winter.”
The kindly doctor wondered at the message. He had but recently come to San Seritos and he did not understand the cause, as the old physician whose place he had taken, would have understood it.
Robert Widdemere, without the loving tenderness of a mother to help him bear his great loneliness, did not care to live until he met Gypsy Nan. When she had looked at him so reprovingly with those dark eyes that could be so serious or dancingly merry, and had said that it was cowardly for him to give up so weakly he had decided that she was right. He ought to want to live to carry out some of the splendid things that his father had begun if for nothing else, but now there was something else! He wanted to get strong soon that he might ride horseback with Nan over the mountains.
When Miss Squeers returned to push the wheeled chair and its usually listless occupant back to the house she was surprised to note that he looked up with a welcoming smile. “Nurse,” he said, “do you know, I am actually hungry. Don’t give me broth tonight. I want some regular things to eat, beefsteak and mashed potatoes.”
A query over the wire brought a speedy reply from the physician: “Give the lad whatever he asks for and note the result.”
The next day Doctor Wainridge called and the lad asked: “Doctor, is there any real reason why I cannot walk?”
“None whatever, son, that I know of,” the gentleman replied, “except that you have been too weak to stand, but if you continue with the menu that you ordered last night, you will soon be able to enter the Marathon races. There is nothing physically wrong with you, lad. I decided that you had made up your mind that you did not care to get well.”
The boy looked around and finding that they were alone, he confided, “I did feel that way, doctor, but now I wish to get well soon, and be a pirate or a gypsy or something uncivilized.”