“And duty?”
“Yes, and duty. Say, Doctor, if you’d ever cared all there was in you to care for one woman, and then had to 81 give her up, you’d know how I feel. And if, then, a sort of service opened up before you, you’d know how I welcome this.”
Jim’s face, white from his illness, was wonderfully handsome now, and he looked at his friend with that eager longing for sympathy men of his mould need deeply. Horace Carey stood up beside the bed and, looking down with a face where intense feeling and self-control were manifest, said in a low voice:
“I have cared. I have had to give up, and I know what service means.”
CHAPTER VI
When the Grasshopper Was a Burden
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Although the figtree shall not blossom, neither
shall fruit be in the vines, the labor of the olive shall
fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock
shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no
herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. —HABAKKUK. |
While Jim Shirley was getting back to health, he and his physician had many long talks regarding the West and its future; its products and its people. There was only one topic in which Horace Carey was but intermittently interested, namely, Jim’s neighbors—the Aydelots. At least, it seemed so to Jim, who had loved Asher from boyhood, and had taken Virginia on sight and paid homage to her for all the years that followed. Jim accepted the doctor’s manner at first as a mere personal trait, but, having nothing to do except to lie and think, he grew curiously annoyed over it.