One evening she came near divining the reason for her anxious looks.
Elizabeth still kept up her Saturday afternoon visit to Mother MacAllister, and to-night they had had the blue dishes for tea. As she wiped them and arranged them on the high shelf of the cupboard, Mother MacAllister went down cellar to attend to her milk. Elizabeth finished her work and picked up a book Charles Stuart had left on the window. It was a theological work, and as Mother MacAllister came out of the cool cellar, the girl looked up joyfully.
"Then Stuart is going to be a minister after all, is he?"
The mother's beautiful eyes grew eager, hungry. "Would he be saying that to you, lovey?" she asked in a half-whisper.
"No. But this book; it's a theological work. I thought from it——" Elizabeth's heart was touched by the expression on Mother MacAllister's face. It had grown very sad. She glanced at the book and shook her head. "No, no, dearie," she said, and there was a quiver in her voice that made the girl's heart contract. "I am afraid it is books like that one that will be keeping young men away from the truth."
Elizabeth patted her arm in silent sympathy. She knew Mother MacAllister's great ambition for her boy. And Charles Stuart was such an orator too—it seemed too bad. She picked up the book again, glancing through it, and thought surely Mother MacAllister must be mistaken. It seemed such an entirely good sort of book, like "Pilgrim's Progress," or something of that sort.
"What are you going to be?" she asked as Charles Stuart walked home with her in the golden August, evening along Champlain's Road.
"I don't know," said the young man. "Sometimes I think I'd like to go in for medicine. But my four years in Arts will put me hopelessly behind John. I really haven't decided what I'll do."
"I remember you used to be divided between the ministry and veterinary surgery," reminded Elizabeth.
He laughed. "I think there is about equal chances between them still," he said, and Elizabeth's older self saw he did not wish to pursue the subject. She was very sorry for Mother MacAllister, but on the whole she still thought Charles Stuart was wise in choosing some less exacting profession than the ministry.