There was a sudden brightening of the girl’s face, “Oh, Robert Widdemere,” she said, “I am so glad I asked you. I understand now better how it is, I, also, shall trust and have faith.”
She arose and mounted on her pony and they began climbing the steeper trail which led to the summit of the low mountain.
At last they rode out into the sunlight, and, dismounting, stood on the peak of the trail.
Such beauty of scene as there was everywhere about them. Beyond the coast range, across a wide valley, there was still a higher and a more rugged mountain range and beyond that, in the far distance, a third, the peaks of which were scarcely visible in the haze and clouds.
Then they turned toward the sea, which, from that high point could be seen far beyond the horizon that they had every day on the beach. “Lady Red Bird,” the boy laughed, “you will think me very dull today, I fear, but I can’t help philosophising a bit at times. I was just thinking that when troubles crowd around us, it would be a wonderful thing, if, in our thoughts, we could climb to a high place and look down at them, we would find that, after all, they were not very large nor very important.”
“Things do look small, surely,” the girl said. “See the town nestling down there. The church steeple seems very little from here.”
“I see the pepper tree where we first met,” the lad turned and took the girl’s hand. “I shall always think of you as my Lady Red Bird,” he told her. Hand in hand they continued to stand as brother and sister might.
“And I see our marble fountain glistening in the sun,” Nan declared. Suddenly the boy’s clasp in the girl’s hand tightened. “Look, quick,” he said pointing downward, “there is a limousine turning from the highroad up into our drive. Who do you suppose is coming to call?”
“Perhaps it is your doctor,” Nan suggested.
The lad laughed. “No indeed. For one thing he rides in an open run-about, and for another, he told me that since I had made up my mind to get well, he would have nothing more to do with me. There are enough truly sick people he said, who need his attention.”