Under her light tones and in the affectionate touch of her hand as she ran her fingers through his hair, Ross detected an undercurrent of solicitude, which brought forth a counter-accusation. Rising hastily, he laid both hands on her shoulders, and looked down from an altitude of five feet ten.
"Aunt Anne, you know what father wrote to uncle, don’t you?"
Mrs. Grant’s eyes fell. "Better take a good run over the mountain, Ross," she parried.
Ross’s hands slipped from her shoulders. "I see there’s no use asking either of you what he wrote."
Mrs. Grant flecked some dust from the table. "Sometimes, Ross," was her only reply, "disappointment is the very best and most strengthening tonic we can take."
She turned away, adding without glancing back as she left the room: "I do wish, Ross, that you’d get out and exercise more. You would conquer Gray’s ’Anatomy’–and all other difficulties–more quickly if you would."
"I guess you’re right, Aunt Anne," assented Ross.
"Yes," scolded Aunt Anne to her sister in the living-room–but the scolding rested on a very apparent foundation of love–"Ross always agrees with me about taking vigorous exercise–and then never takes it. Now watch him walk, will you?" she fretted, looking out of the window.
Her sister, busily sewing, paused with suspended needle, and glanced out. Ross was going slowly down the drive, his head bent forward, his youthful shoulders carelessly sagging, his long arms aimlessly hanging, giving him a curiously helpless appearance at variance with his large frame.
"It’s Ross’s own fault," declared Aunt Anne. "He doesn’t like to exert himself physically. Not that he’s lazy," defensively, "for he isn’t. He would work all night over a patient, and never think of himself; but to get out and exercise for the sake of exercising, and straightening himself up, and holding himself, somehow–well, I’ve talked myself hoarse about it, and then found that he had been reading some medical book or other all the time I was talking!"