With a hasty word of apology, only half uttered, Gilbert was down the steps and standing by the motor-car. When the best thing possible happens to a man, the thing far too good to be dreamed of, it is at first unbelievable. But there she was, surely, Rosalie, her very self, in a long tan motoring coat, with a filmy scarf tied under her dimpling chin, her cheeks pink, her blue eyes dancing!
"Oh!" cried Gilbert, too overcome with joy for coherent speech, "it can't be you!"
"Yes, it's me," trilled Rosalie, laughing at her own lapse of English. "Here's Aunt Eleanor, and Maud, and all the rest of us!"
He greeted them in a half-dazed manner. He could see no one but Rosalie, could realize nothing but the dazzling joy of her coming.
He scarcely listened even to her explanation of their appearance. They had started north on a short tour, but had never dreamed of going so far. They had spent the night at a friend's in Lakeview, and thought they must run out here and see him and his practice in their primitive state. Would they come in? Why, of course they would! She wanted to get nearer to that gorgeous piper, not to speak of the hens and ducks and pigs. And did he raise geese and turkeys himself? And had he taken a prize?
Gilbert helped the ladies to alight. He was well acquainted with Rosalie's aunt and sister, and shook hands with the elder woman warmly. She had ever been a good friend to him, and had helped him many a time when Rosalie had contrived to make him miserable. The two young men he had met before. He recognized the owner of the car as an old rival, and looked at him with dark suspicion. His name had been coupled with Rosalie's during the past season oftener than he liked.
As the party of strangers entered the grounds they caused more excitement than the piper and the merry-go-round combined. Such a piece of mechanism as a motor-car had never before come within the range of Granny Long's telescope. Folks who had been fortunate enough to attend the Toronto Exhibition came home with great tales of having seen just such machines shooting around the city streets without any aid, and Bella Winters and Wes Long had even had their pictures taken together in one for twenty-five cents. But to most people this great red monster, looking, for all the world, as Spectacle John said, like a live threshing-mill, was an astounding sight. When the party left, a crowd of men gathered about it, keeping carefully out of its track, for William Winters had seen one at Niagara Falls that ran backward as well as forward, and you could never tell when such uncanny things might shoot off in any direction. The women were more interested in the rustling silks and veils of the ladies of the party, and formed a silent and admiring lane for them as they passed to the pine knoll.
As Gilbert walked by Rosalie's side his tumultuous joy gradually became mingled with other feelings. He wanted, more than anything else in the world, to get a word with her alone, and Blackburn was walking at her other side, with a maddening air of proprietorship. He was a genial, harmless sort of young man, but he was wealthy, and the sight of his prosperous complacency made the impecunious young doctor long to do him some bodily injury. And all the while Rosalie laughed and chatted as though every one in the world was as happy as herself. She went into fits of merriment over young Blackburn's facetious remarks, for, as they walked through the crowds, that gentleman was making presumably witty comments upon all he saw, from Piper Angus down, and Gilbert wondered drearily if even he, himself, thought he was saying anything funny.
"I say, Allen!" he cried, "you've got a fine collection for the zoo here. If Barnum had only lived to see this day! I—oh, I say! Look there!" He stood still, and gazed ahead of him in genuine admiration. "Say, there's somebody that doesn't look as if she belonged to this menagerie. The Queen of Sheba, all right. Who is her royal highness? Know her, Allen?"
Gilbert looked in the same direction, and became possessed of an unreasoning anger. Elsie Cameron was standing by her brother's side, under a spreading pine. Her trim, dark-green dress and hat, the soft rose-leaf tints of her face, and the rich bronze gold of her hair, made a picture so perfect that he might easily have excused the stranger's outburst. But he longed, more than ever, to knock him down.