"No indeed. That isn't right at all," she objected. "Don't listen to him anybody. It isn't going to be tomorrow. I've got to have a wedding dress and it takes at least a week to dream a wedding dress when it is the only time you ever intend to be married. I have all the other things—everything I need down to the last hair pin and powder puff. That's why I went to Boston. I knew I was going to want pretty clothes quick. I told Doctor Holiday so." She sent a charming, half merry, half deprecating smile at the older doctor who smiled back.
"She most assuredly did," he corroborated. "I never suspected it was part of a deep laid plot however. I thought it was just femininity cropping out after a dull season. How was I to know it was because you were planning to run off with my assistant that you wanted all the gay plumage?" he teased.
Ruth made a dainty little grimace at that.
"That isn't a fair way to put it," she declared. "If I had been planning to run away with Larry or he with me we would have done it months ago, plumage or no plumage. I wanted to but he wouldn't anyway," she confessed. "I like this way much, much better though. I don't want to be married anywhere except right here in the heart of the House on the Hill."
She slipped out of her chair and away from Larry's hands at that and went over to where Doctor Philip sat.
"May we?" she asked like a child asking permission to run out and play.
"It is what we all want more than anything in the world, dear child," he said. "You belong with Larry in our hearts as well as in the heart of the House. You know that, don't you?"
"I know you are the dearest man that ever was, not even excepting Larry.
And I am going to kiss you, Uncle Phil, so there. I can call you that
now, can't I? I've always wanted to." And fitting the deed to the word
Ruth bent over and gave Doctor Philip a fluttering little butterfly kiss.
They rose from the table at that and Ruth was bidden go off to her room and get a long rest after her too exciting morning. Larry soberly repaired to the office and received patients and prescribed gravely for them just as if his inner self were not executing wild fandangoes of joy. Perhaps his patients did get a few waves of his happiness however for there was not one of them who did not leave the office with greater hope and strength and courage than he brought there.
"The young doctor's getting to be a lot like his uncle," one of them said to his wife later. "Just the very touch of his hand made me feel better today, sort of toned up as if I had had an electrical treatment. Queer how human beings can shoot sparks sometimes."