“He had to permit it. I've always been for Harvard ever since I thought about college. Dad was all for a Western university, but I sat back in the stirrups and pulled for Harvard and finally he gave in. He generally gives in if I buck hard enough. He's a bully old Dad and we're great pals, more like brothers than father and son. The only point where we disagree is his confounded sectional prejudice. He thinks the sun not only sets in the West but rises there.”
The girl learned that he intended entering the Harvard Medical School in the fall.
“I had to fight for that, too,” he said, with a laugh. “I've always wanted to be a doctor but Dad wouldn't give in for ever so long. He is interested in mining properties there at home and it was his idea that I should come in with him when I finished school. But I couldn't see it. I wanted to study medicine. Dad says there are almost as many starving doctors as there are down-at-the-heel lawyers; if I go in with him, he says, I shall have what is practically a sure thing and a soft snap for the rest of my days. That doesn't suit me. I want to work; I expect to. I want to paddle my own canoe. I may be the poorest M.D. that ever put up a sign, but I'm going to put that sign up just the same. And if I starve I shan't ask him or anyone else to feed me.”
He laughed again as he said it, but there was a determined ring in his voice and a square set to his chin which Mary noticed and liked. He meant what he said, that was evident.
“I think a doctor's profession is one of the noblest and finest in the world,” she said.
“Do you? Good for you! So do I. It doesn't bring in the dollars as fast as some others, but it does seem a man's job to me. The big specialists make a lot of money too, but that isn't exactly what I mean. Some of the best men I've met were just country doctors, working night and day in all sorts of weather and getting paid or not, just as it happened. That old Doctor Harley down in your town is one of that kind, I think. I saw something of his work while I was there.”
“Did you? I shouldn't have thought you had time for that, with all the picnics and sailing parties.”
“I did, though. I met him at Sam's. Mrs. Keith had a cold or a cough or something. He and I got to talking and he asked me to come and see him. I went, you bet! Went out with him on some of his drives while he made his calls, you know. He told me a lot of things. He's a brick.”
“It's queer,” he went on, after a moment, “but I felt really at home down there in that little place. Seemed as if I had been there before and—and—by George, almost as if I belonged there. It was my first experience on and around salt water, but that seemed natural, too. And the people—I mean the people that belong there, not the summer crowd—I liked them immensely. Those two fine old cards that kept the store—Eh, I beg pardon; they are relatives of yours, aren't they? I forgot.”
“They are my uncles,” said Mary, simply. “I have lived with them almost all my life. They are the best men in the world.”