Thaine recalled the evening hour when he and Leigh were on the Purple Notches and he had declared in the pride of his nineteen years that he wanted to go out into the big world that is always needing men and do a man’s part there.
“If the big world needs men anywhere, it is on the old prairies,” he declared, and the doctor continued: “I have found my future already. I shall not leave China again. Grass River may miss me as a friend but not as a doctor of medicine. Doctors are too plentiful there. My place is here henceforth, and I’m still young. I came to the Philippines to be with Thaine”—Horace Carey’s voice was low, and the same old winning smile was on his face—“because I love the boy and because I wanted to protect him if it should be my fortune to do it. I saved him from the waters of the Rio Grande and helped to pull him out of the hospital at Manila. He doesn’t need me now, for he goes to do a big work, and I stay here to do a big work.”
“Out of love for me alone?” Thaine asked affectionately, throwing one arm about Horace Carey’s shoulder.
“No, not you alone,” Carey answered frankly, “but because something in your face always reminds me of a face I loved long ago. Of one for whose sake I have cared for you here. You are going home a brave man. I believe your life will be full of service and of happiness.” 396
The silence that followed was broken by Pryor Gaines saying:
“All this time—such a tragical time—I have forgotten, Thaine, that I have a message for you, a little package that reached here late last May. It was sent to me because the sender thought you were coming to China soon, and I was asked to keep it for you. You didn’t come, and mails ceased to leave Peking—and then came the siege, the struggle to keep up the defenses, the sickness, the starvation, the deaths, the constant attacks, the final sight of Old Glory on the outer walls, and your triumphal entry through the sewer. You see why I forgot.”
He took a little package from his writing desk and gave it into Thaine Aydelot’s hand.
The young soldier tried to open it with steady fingers, for the address was in a handwriting he knew well. Inside a flat little box was a card bearing the words:
| To Prince Quippi, Beyond the Purple Notches. |
And underneath that lay a withered little yellow sunflower.