“Louder and louder sounded the hoof-beats.”
Dorothy came the next day, Dr. Trevillian bringing her over himself in answer to the urgent note sent him by Bobbie’s father, and for a week the two were blissfully happy. At the end of that time Dorothy was taken back, the promise that she should come again being the only way of stopping her sobs at parting. Bobbie was standing in the doorway with his hands clutched closely together, trying hard to keep back the tears; but when the carriage was lost sight of by a turn in the road, he ran to his mother and buried his head in her lap. “He can take her from me now, ’cause I’m little and can’t help it,” he blurted out, gulpingly, “but when we get bigger I won’t let any man, not even her father, take her from me; for, mother,” and he slipped up into her lap and locked his arms around her neck, “if I tell you something will you promise not to tell—not even father?” and he whispered something solemnly in her ear, and his mother laughed and kissed him, and held him a little closer to her heart.
When Dr. Trevillian put his little daughter into the carriage and started off for home, he wondered why he had been fool enough to let her stay away from him and her own home for seven long days, and then when he saw the beautiful baby eyes, with their wondrously beautiful lashes all filled with tears, and heard the little catch in her voice because she was leaving her playfellow, he felt himself a selfish brute, and his heart smote him at the thought of the loneliness of his motherless child.
The Tayloes and Trevillians had been friends loyal and true for generations back, but only of late had the Doctor begun again to visit “White Point.” After the terrible shock of his wife’s death he had refused to go among his former friends or take up his old life as before, and not until Dorothy was nearly three years old did he realize the error of his way, or the injustice to his child that such a life entailed. He began gradually to resume his practice and to visit a little, and when he yielded to Mr. Tayloe’s request that Dorothy should come and pay them a visit, it was only after a severe struggle and the urgent pleading of his maiden sister that the child should have this pleasure, that he finally gave in, and the pain it cost him to let her go was known only to himself.
And that was the way it went on. Year in and year out they grew up, seeing each other so constantly that no thought of either was ever kept from the other; and while over everybody else in the house and neighborhood Bobbie reigned supreme, to Dorothy alone did he succumb, and mercilessly she tyrannized over him with all the inconsistency of the woman nature that was in her.
CHAPTER III.
