Gilbert's mind dived back into the remembrance of his stableboy's remarks of a few minutes earlier. What had he said? He could not remember, except that the village had designated some one of that name as the object of his future attentions, and there was something, too, about red hair. He thought her hair beautiful—quite wonderful, indeed, in its bronze splendor.
He murmured some polite remark, and was wondering if he might ask to be allowed to carry the basket of eggs up the hill, or if he would be committing an outrage by so doing, when he was saved from making a second mistake by a shout from the opposite bank:
"Elsie! Elsie, lassie! Would yon be the new doctor body ye've got there?"
The voice came from a little old man, hobbling, with the aid of a stick, along the water's edge. His small body was almost bent double, and his whole person seemed engulfed in a huge straw hat, from under which appeared his only prominent feature—a long, wispy, red beard.
The girl gave a little inarticulate sound, and Gilbert glanced at her. Her stately gravity had vanished, her face was lit with a radiant smile. She ran down to the brink of the stream.
"Yes, Uncle Hughie," she called, in a clear, silvery tone, with a new caressing quality in it, "it's Dr. Allen. Do you want to speak to him?"
"Yes, yes. Oh, yes, indeed. Come away across, man! Come away! There's a poor, sick body lying down the glen a wee bit. Come away, man, and try your hand on him whatefer."
Gilbert glanced at the girl again, half doubtfully. This was so unlike the first call to a patient which he had so often pictured that he was taken unawares. She seemed to divine his thoughts.
"Will you go?" she said gently. "It is my uncle. He is always helping some one in trouble. Perhaps there has been an accident in the mill."
"Of course, of course, I shall be glad," he cried, filled with compunction; and with a word of farewell he sprang nimbly across the stepping-stones.