"Oh, no, it ain't! It will be a great job, Rod. Your father would be getting it for me. Your father's been awful good to us, Rod. Say, tell me about the city. Is it an awful big place?"
Roderick studied the young man's heavy face, as he talked. Here was one of his father's neighbours of the Jericho Road. For twenty years or more, he could remember his father struggling to bring Peter Fiddle to a life of sobriety and righteousness and to bring up his son in the same. And what had he to show for it all? Old Peter was a worse drunkard than he had been twenty years ago, and poor Young Peter was the hopeless result of that drinking. Roderick's kindly heart sympathised with his father's efforts, but his head pronounced judgment upon them. He confessed he could see very little use in bothering with the sort of folk that were forever stumbling on the Jericho Roads of life.
Peter went back reluctantly to the engine-room, and Roderick ran up on deck to see the Inverness enter the Gates. He had not been home for a whole long year, and he was eager as a child to get the first glimpse of Algonquin and the little cove where the old farm lay.
As he was passing round to the wheel-house, he noticed again the young stranger who had come on board at Barbay. He had been puzzled then by the recollection of having seen her before, and he walked slowly, looking at her and trying to recall where and when it could have been. As he approached, she turned in his direction, her eyes following the sweep of a gull's white wing, and he recognised her. He remembered her quite distinctly, for he could count on his fingers the number of young ladies he had met in his busy college days, and Miss Murray was not one that could be easily forgotten. He stood at the railing and recalled the scene. It had been at the home of Mrs. Carruthers, Billy Parker's aunt. That kind lady made it a blessed habit to invite hungry students to her home on Sunday nights. And the suppers she gave! Billy had taken Roderick that evening, and there were a half-dozen more. And this Miss Murray had dropped in after church with Richard Wells. Wells was a medical in his last year, and Roderick had met him often before. Miss Murray had worn some sort of soft white dress, he remembered, and a big white hat, and she had been very bright and gay then, not sad and pensive as she seemed now.
He did not realise that he was staring intently at her, while he recalled all this, until she turned and looked at him. She gave a start of surprised recognition mingled with something of dismay. For an instant she looked irresolute; then she bowed, and Roderick came quickly forward. She gave him her hand, a vague look in her deep grey-blue eyes. She remembered him; Roderick's appearance was too striking to be easily forgotten; but it was plain she could not recall where.
"It was a Sunday evening, last fall—at Mrs. Carruthers'," he stammered. She smiled reassuringly.
"Oh, yes, it was stupid of me to forget. You were in law, weren't you?"
"Yes, in my last year. I'm just on my way home now, to practise in Algonquin. Are you going to visit friends here?"
"No, I'm going to teach." She did not seem to want to speak of herself. "Algonquin is a very pretty place, I hear."
"It's is the most lovely place in Canada," said Roderick enthusiastically. He was not as shy in her presence as he usually was with young women. He could not help seeing, that for some unaccountable reason, she was embarrassed at meeting him, and her distress made him forget himself. He tried to put her at her ease in a flurried way.