“I knew you could. I heard you once ‘telling’ to Jonathan Edwards out under the hemlocks when you thought no one else was listening. It’s a glorious gift, dear, and I feel sure you’ll do wonders with it some day. See! Hannah and Frieda are almost crying! Come on, girls. She doesn’t even know what she has done. We’ll have to take her home and have her mother explain it!”
Catherine revived from her dazed condition sufficiently to protest against being led out of the door, and the four went gayly up the hill together; 220 but Catherine’s mind was intent on the suggestion which Algernon had made. “Professional? Work? A vocation? Anything so simple and delightful, and natural as telling stories? Could I do something that would make lots of people happier and better, as Aunt Clara’s pictures do, and Mother’s work and Father’s?” The bliss of the idea was quite too much for her, and she broke away from the others, exclaiming:
“I’ll race you all to the porch steps. One, two, three, scramble!”
221CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DOCTOR’S ORDERS
Dr. Helen, dismissing her last patient at the office door, glanced into the waiting-room. To her surprise, she saw Alice sitting there with a magazine in her hand.
“Why, my dear, what is wrong? Are you ill? Come in here.” Alice rose and followed her into the little white room.
“Nothing is wrong. I wanted to see you alone for a few minutes, and I thought this was the best way to do it. Are you quite free now?”
“Entirely. Sit down in this comfortable chair. I was startled. To have you fall ill after a week with us would be distressing.”
“It has been such a dear week!” sighed Alice. “And I’ve rested all the time and have loved being with the girls. No, I’m quite well. But I had a letter from Mrs. Langdon, at Dexter, you know, just before I left home, and she told me I might tell you, if I cared to, what she has never let me tell any one outside the family,–that is, that I am one of the girls she is helping through college. I’m 222 glad she said I might, for I’ve often wished Catherine knew, and it will be next best if you do.”