"She is all right, perfectly normal every way except that she had forgotten things." Larry's voice was faintly indignant. He resented anybody's implying that Ruth was queer, unbalanced in any way. She wasn't. She was absolutely sane, as sane as Captain Annersley himself, considerably more sane than Larry Holiday could take oath he was at this moment.
"Good heavens! Isn't that enough?" groaned Annersley almost equally indignant. "You forget or rather you don't know all she has forgotten. I know. I was brought up with her. Her father was my uncle and guardian. We played together, had the same tutor, rode the same ponies, got into the same jolly old scrapes. Why, Elinor's like my own sister, man. I can't swallow her forgetting me and her brother Rod and all the rest as easily as you seem to do. It—well, it's the limit as you say in the states." The captain wiped his forehead on which great drops of perspiration stood in spite of the January chill in the air. There was agitation, suppressed vehemence in his tone.
"I suppose it is natural that you should feel that way." Larry spoke thoughtfully as he turned the car away from the Hill in response to his guest's request that he be permitted to postpone meeting Elinor Ruth Farringdon a little while. "The remembering part hasn't bothered me so much. Maybe I wasn't very keen on having her remember. Maybe I was afraid she would remember too much," he added coloring a little.
The frown on his companion's stern young face melted at that. The frank, boyish smile appeared again. He liked Larry Holiday none the less for his lack of pretense. He understood all that. The younger Holiday had taken pains to make things perfectly clear to him. He knew precisely what the young doctor was afraid of and why in case Elinor Farringdon's memory returned.
"My uncle thinks and I think too that her memory will come back now that it has the external stimulus to waken it," Larry continued. "I shouldn't be surprised if seeing you would give the necessary impetus. In fact I am counting on that very thing happening, hoping for it with all my might. That was one of the reasons I was glad to have you come. Please believe that I should have been glad even if your coming had made her remember she was your wife. Of course her recovery is the main thing. The rest is—a side issue."
"A jolly important side issue I take it for her and for you. I'm not a stranger, Doctor Holiday. I am Elinor Ruth Farringdon's cousin, in her brother's absence I represent her family and in that capacity I would like to say before I am a minute older that what you and the rest of you Holidays have done for Elinor passes anything I know of for sheer fineness and generosity. I'm not a man of words. War would have knocked them out of me if I had been but when I remember that you not only saved Elinor's life but took care of her afterward when she apparently hadn't a friend in the world—well, there isn't anything I can say but thank you and tell you that if there is ever anything I can do in return for you or yours you have only to ask. Neither Elinor nor I can ever repay you. It is the sort of thing that is—unpayable." And again the captain wiped his perspiring brow. He was deeply moved and emotion went hard with his Anglo-Saxon temperament.
"We did nothing but what anybody would have been glad to do. If there are any thanks coming they are chiefly due to my uncle and his wife. But we don't any of us want thanks. We love Ruth. Please forget the rest. We would rather you would."
The captain nodded quick approval. He had been told Americans were boasters, given to Big-Itis. But either people got the Americans wrong or these Holidays were an exception to the general run. He remembered that other young Holiday whom he had met rather intimately in the Canadian camp. There had been no side there either. His modesty had been one of his chief charms. And here was the brother quietly putting aside credit for a course of conduct which was simply immense in its quixotic generosity. He liked these Holidays. There was something rather magnificent about their simplicity—something almost British he thought.
"That is all very well," he made answer. "I won't talk about it if you prefer but you will pardon me if I don't forget that you saved my cousin's life and looked after her when she was in a desperately unhappy situation and her own people seemed to have utterly deserted her. And I consider my running into your brother at camp one of the sheerest pieces of good luck I've had these many days on all counts."
"How did it happen?" asked Larry.