"You will have to take great care of yourself," said Dr. Buxton. "You must be prudent. The slightest change in the temperature may send you to bed for the rest of the winter."
"Dr. Buxton is complimenting you, Aunt Harriet," said Helen. "You should drop him a courtesy."
Whereupon the amiable physician, seeing that there was no remedy for the humorous view which Miss Eustis took of her condition, went further, and informed her that there was every reason why she should be serious. He told her, with some degree of bluntness, that her symptoms, while not alarming, were not at all reassuring.
"It is always the way, Dr. Buxton," said Helen, smiling tenderly at her aunt; "I believe you would confess to serious symptoms yourself if Aunt Harriet insisted on it. What an extraordinary politician she would make! My sympathy with the woman-suffrage movement is in the nature of an investment. When we women succeed to the control of affairs, I count on achieving distinction as Aunt Harriet's niece."
Laughing, she seized her aunt's hand. Dr. Buxton, watching her, laughed too, and then proceeded to write out a prescription. He seemed to hesitate a little over this; seeing which, Helen remonstrated:
"Pray, Dr. Buxton, don't humor Aunt Harriet too much in this. Save your physic for those who are strong in body and mind. A dozen of your pellets ought to be a year's supply." The physician wrote out his prescription, and took his leave, laughing heartily at the amiable confusion in which Helen's drollery had left her aunt.
It is not to be supposed, however, that Miss Eustis was simply droll. She was unconventional at all times, and sometimes wilful—inheriting that native strength of mind and mother wit which are generally admitted to be a part of the equipment of the typical American woman. If she was not the ideal young woman, at least she possessed some of the attractive qualities that one tries—sometimes unsuccessfully—to discover in one's dearest friends. From her infancy, until near the close of the war, she had had the advantage of her father's companionship, so that her ideas were womanly rather than merely feminine. She had never been permitted to regard the world from the dormer-windows of a young ladies' seminary, in consequence of which her views of life in general, and of mankind in particular, were orderly and rational. Such indulgence as her father had given her had served to strengthen her individuality rather than to confirm her temper; and, though she had a strong and stubborn will of her own, her tact was such that her wilfulness appeared to be the most natural as well as the most charming thing in the world. Moreover, she possessed in a remarkable degree that buoyancy of mind that is more engaging than mere geniality.
Her father was no less a person than Charles Osborne Eustis, the noted philanthropist and abolitionist, whose death in 1867 was the occasion of quite a controversy in New England—a controversy based on the fact that he had opposed some of the most virulent schemes of his coworkers at a time when abolitionism had not yet gathered its full strength. Mr. Eustis, in his day, was in the habit of boasting that his daughter had a great deal of genuine American spirit—the spirit that one set of circumstances drives to provinciality, another to patriotism, and another to originality.
Helen had spent two long winters in Europe without parting with the fine flavor of her originality. She was exceedingly modest in her designs, too, for she went neither as a missionary nor as a repentant. She found no foreign social shrines that she thought worthy of worshiping at. She admired what was genuine, and tolerated such shams as obtruded themselves on her attention. Her father's connections had enabled her to see something of the real home-life of England; and she was delighted, but not greatly surprised, to find that at its best it was not greatly different from the home life to which she had been accustomed.
The discovery delighted her because it confirmed her own broad views; but she no more thought it necessary to set about aping the social peculiarities to be found in London drawing-rooms than she thought of denying her name or her nativity. She made many interesting studies and comparisons, but she was not disposed to be critical. She admired many things in Europe which she would not have considered admirable in America, and whatever she found displeasing she tolerated as the natural outcome of social or climatic conditions. Certainly the idea never occurred to her that her own country was a barren waste because time had not set the seal of antiquity on its institutions. On the other hand, this admirable young woman was quick to perceive that much information as well as satisfaction was to be obtained by regarding various European peculiarities from a strictly European point of view.