Sylvia Arden Decides

by Margaret Piper Chalmers

Phil explained that everything would have been quite all right in any case since the "sweet girl" had been willing to come to him if he had not been able to come to her.

"Quite as it should be," Mrs. Huntley had declared approvingly. "But I am glad it has come out as it has just the same. Do you know, Philip, I've always been a little glad you didn't take Justin's offer, dearly as I should have loved to have you with us."

Phil hesitated to speak, not being quite certain of his hostess' course of reasoning. But she soon enlightened him.

"It isn't the kind of work for a young man," she went on. "It is too disillusioning. Don't you think so? It might have made you a little--just a little--cynical, you know. Mightn't it? It is hard to keep your faith in human nature when you have a practice like Justin's." She paused a moment then continued with unusual affirmatives. "Justin was a country practitioner in a little town once. He took his father's place. Wonderful old man--Justin's father! As much of a priest as a doctor Justin used to say. He lived among kind, simple, hard-working people and they loved him like a father. You should have seen them flocking in from the farms and mountains to his funeral. There was a kind of personal relation you don't get in cities."

"No," agreed Phil. "Anyway, you don't get it in Dr. Huntley's kind of practice. I get some few chunks of personality at the clinic."

"Sometimes I've wished Justin had stayed in the country and followed his father's steps. But I suppose it had to be this way. Justin wasn't satisfied until he had worked his way to the top, though sometimes one wonders what the top really is," she sighed. "But, anyway, I am glad your father's son is going to have a different outlook. Justin will be glad, too. He liked your refusal, though it disappointed him. He understood."

"He has been very good to me, and you, too," said Phil, warmly. "I hope you don't think I don't appreciate his kindness and was ungrateful. It was a big thing to offer a young man. But I couldn't take it. I had to hold tight for my kind of a job. And, thanks to luck and Doctor Daly, I have it."

Watching the fine, earnest, young face, with its clear, honest, blue eyes, and that firm, strong chin, Mrs. Huntley thought Phil Lorrimer owed his opportunity chiefly to his own intrinsic worth, clear head, and fine ideals, which was true. But perhaps almost more was he beholden to a big-souled missionary out in China who had set him a standard of manhood to follow and a gentle, low-voiced woman who lived at the foot of Sylvia's Hill and had a gift for mothering.

July brought Stephen Kinnard back to Greendale after much wandering, from Alaska to Mexico, from Mexico to Quebec, and finally to Maryland. He had written charming desultory letters from time to time to Felicia and had been especially rejoiced over her having won the competition as he had prophesied. But never in any of the letters had he pressed again the question he had asked in September. Among other arts Stephen Kinnard possessed the art of long patience and the power of biding his time.

Occasionally jolly, friendly, brotherly epistles had come for Hope, too. At first Hope had blushed delightfully over them and read and reread them until she fairly knew them by heart. But as the letters came less frequently she gradually ceased to watch for them. Youth needs something more substantial than a chimera to feed upon. Moreover, in June, a young architect had come to Greendale to build Doctor Tom's hospital, a rather clever young man with some Beaux Arts letters after his name and a good eye for a pretty girl. Passing up the Hill and down it as he did frequently in his interviews with the Doctor, he had occasion to go by the Oriole Inn and it took him remarkably little time to discover that it was agreeable to drop in afternoons for a cup of tea in the quaint dining-room or out under the trees which the orioles still haunted. Perhaps not the least of the charms of the place was the presence of the fair-haired, slender lily of a girl who hovered about with a pleasing anxiety that he be well served and often took the task of ministration upon herself in her zeal.