XIX
"It's my innings now, while Ewart is away," said the Doctor; "Marcia, will you go skiing to-morrow with me and Cale?"
"Did n't I promise you I would wait till you came?"
"I know you did; but possession, you know, is nine tenths of the law, and Ewart has been having it all his own way here with you since I left. He did, however, give me a parting word to look out for you. I don't see that you need much looking after; a young lady perfectly able to look out for herself, eh, Mrs. Macleod?"
"Perhaps the circumstances warranted some sort of chaperonage, Doctor," said Mrs. Macleod, entering into his fun and frolic as into no one's else. "As Marcia sets it forth, she was alone, except for you, on the platform of the junction nine miles from home, with Cale braced in the pung on the highroad, ready for the horses to bolt."
"Yes," said the Doctor, musing, "the circumstances were slightly out of the ordinary.—A full bowl, if you please, Marcia."
We were sitting around the hearth in the livingroom on the following Sunday evening. Porridge had just been brought in and I was dispensing it. Mr. Ewart's insistence upon Cale's joining us at this hour every evening, and remaining with us when no guest was present—the Doctor we counted one of us—had for result that, many an evening, we listened delighted and interested to his stories of adventure in the new Northwest. He was, in truth, a man of the woods, a man also of their moods, and like them showing track and trail, leafy underbrush, primeval forest trees, and the darling flowers of the forest as well; but, also, like them, withholding from our eyes the secret springs of his life. We often wondered if ever he would disclose any one of them.
"A Yankee brother to old André," was Jamie's definition of him. He seldom spoke of matters personal to himself, so seldom that Jamie's great joke, perpetrated in his mother's presence and mine, was to the effect that "Ewart and Cale and Marcia are all enlisted in the reserves, mother; and only you, the Doctor, and I are able to fight in the open." The full significance of which good-natured raillery I understood, and answered him accordingly:
"All in good time, Jamie. There is so little to tell, it's worth while to keep you guessing."