“You will come again and see how Beth is getting along? Don’t give up your studies. You’ll regret it if you do. Some time when I have leisure I would like to talk with you about our Club. I know you would be interested and would like to join.”
Eliza went her way. Already the horizon had broadened. A Columbus to her own soul! She grasped what that might mean. No one could tell her own possibilities, her own capabilities, until she cast aside prejudice, servitude to customs which were accepted only because they had been in existence for centuries, and started forth to express the sweetness and strength of her own life.
Eliza hurried along with buoyant step. Her feet were light and her hopes high. Her white dress had been mended, but it was the perfection of daintiness. She was good to look at as she went her way, a graceful, gracious, smiling woman.
“Slow up, or there’ll be a head-on collision,” cried a merry voice. “I declare I’m always ‘flagging’ people to prevent a wreck.”
Eliza brought herself to a sudden stop. Doctor Dullmer, smiling and gracious, stood before her.
“I beg your pardon, I didn’t see you. I was preoccupied,” she stammered.
“I believe you. Thoughts in the clouds and heels on the pavements. But I’m not surprised. That’s the way I’m being treated these days. Handsome, attractive young women don’t care to notice a fat, seedy old doctor.”
Eliza laughed at his jest. “It doesn’t matter though how I’m treated. I’ll not forsake my friends. To prove it, I’ll walk down to the crossroads with you. It is unseemly that a young girl like you should be roaming the streets alone at this hour.” His expression was quite grave and his voice as serious as though he were diagnosing a case.
Doctor Dullmer had a thousand subjects to talk upon. He flitted like a bee from one to another, taking out a bit of honey everywhere. When they came to the corner of Champlain Avenue and Sixth Street, which was the beginning of the State Road, Doctor Dullmer pointed across the river to where the base of the mountains spread out into a broad level plain, fully a hundred yards higher than the valley in which Farwell lay. The view from this elevation must have been magnificent, for it extended so that the river swept about it and one could see for miles east and west. Every little village was in sight, and beyond lay the magnificent heights of the Alleghanies.
“Notice those workmen over there. That means something. That means that we are going to be society. Next summer we take to swallow-tailed coats and low-cut vests. We are getting on. We will have a summer hotel there, and the fashionables will come and tell us what beautiful mountains we have. As though we didn’t know that the instant we were able to peep from beneath our perambulator blankets to look at them.”