"Don't you dast to do such a trick, Lauchie McKitterick!" cried Mrs. Winters, shaking her fist in his face. "Harriet's been up helpin' Hannah all mornin', an' she ain't ready for him. Take him on to the station, an' we'll run up an' help her red up before he comes. An' mind you go slow!"
The conductor hastily acquiesced. He was a native of Elmbrook, and knew his place when Susan Winters was giving orders. "Awl aboard!" he shouted.
The group gave one final, farewell flourish toward the train, and then turned and sped up the lane to meet the new emergency. Jake and Hannah, their faces settled once more into their accustomed expressions of good-humored placidity, leaned from their windows and waved their hands. Hannah smiled a toothless but happy smile, and Jake's eyes beamed a great content as he sat back in his seat, and, holding the rattle between his teeth, fumbled happily for a match. He looked across at his wife, and their eyes met in a rapturous smile; for at last, after years of striving and longing, they were on their way to the fulfilment of their great ambition; they were to have a child of their very own!
And so, as the train sped in one direction, and the group of women in another, no one noticed the stooped, gaunt man who dropped from the rear end of the baggage car, and, creeping down the bank of the ravine, disappeared into the green tangle of underbrush.
CHAPTER III
HIS FIRST PATIENT
Oh, the dainty, dainty maid to the borders of the brook
Lingered down as lightly as the breeze;
And the shy water-spiders quit their scurrying to look;
And the happy water whispered to the trees.
—C. G. D. ROBERTS.
Dr. Gilbert Allen, gold-medalist of the Toronto School of Medicine, and just home from a post-graduate course in London and Edinburgh, had his coat off, his sleeves rolled up, and was busy arranging bottles on the shelf of his tiny dispensary. He was whistling cheerily. It was young Dr. Allen's nature to be cheerful even under adverse circumstances, and this morning all his prospects were bright. For after years of spending money—and largely another man's money, too—he was at last on his feet. His college life had been a very happy one, it is true; so, also, had been the years since his graduation, the first two spent as house surgeon in a Toronto hospital, the last, and best of all, in the Old Land. They had given him breadth and experience; but though Gilbert was willing to concede that experience teaches, he was equally assured that she does not pay bills. Now he was a free man, and master of his profession. He used the last phrase modestly; he was ready and anxious to make the mastery more complete, and at the same time to win a name for himself and a home and a fortune for Rosalie.
As he stacked the bottles noisily in their places he glanced around the little room, and wished he might turn a handspring, just to let off steam and be able to write to Harwood and the other fellows to say his office was big enough to admit of the feat. He wisely crushed the desire, for he recognized the fact that he was under surveillance. Just outside the windows stretched a little lawn, with a star-shaped flower-bed in the middle. Up and down this green space, following a leisurely and devious course, journeyed a lawnmower, propelled by a long-limbed youth. His straw hat hung limply from his head, his coat flapped limply from his shoulders, and his trousers bulged limply from his big top-boots. Nevertheless, he had a certain lumbering airiness of movement, and such a mien of lofty indifference to his surroundings that the beholder was impressed with the idea that he was a very sprightly gentleman indeed, and need never work unless he was so minded. Just why he should spend a whole morning cutting a few square yards of short May grass was a problem the doctor had not yet solved. But even in his brief acquaintance, Gilbert had learned that the actions of this young man, who had entered into an important relation to himself as groom and general factotum, were not to be measured by any rational standard.