“I must not be left. Let’s get in!” Connie exclaimed, and they were soon driving rapidly to the station, which they reached just as the train came up, and Mrs. Hart’s face looked from the window in quest of Connie.
There was only time for a hurried good-by, and then the train sped on its way, and Connie was gone for a second time.
Time passed, and news came that she had gone abroad and was in France, in a convent school, and the following autumn Kenneth entered the office of Dr. Catherin at Rocky Point, proving himself so apt a student and exercising so good judgment that before he was graduated the doctor gave him a part of his large practice. After his graduation he opened an office in Millville and another at his home at The 4 Corners, where the people were very proud of their young M.D. And Kenneth was a man to be proud of, whether as a citizen or physician or son. He was not exactly handsome, as we understand the term, but he had just the face which strangers trust, and which sick people like to see at their bedside. With his tall figure and fine physique, he was a man to be noticed among scores of other men, and one of whom Connie would say that he had more than the “goodest” face in the world, if she could see him now. She has been his guiding star, and not an honor has ever been conferred upon him that has not brought with it a thought of her and a wish that she knew. In the stable are two young horses, necessary for his practice, and he calls them Pro and Con, the latter being as near Connie’s name as he dares to come. She is a graceful, high-strung, nervous animal, full of capers and quirks, and rebelling against being hitched to a post, and usually running away if she is not. Pro is gentler and more quiet, and will stand unhitched for hours, while his master is visiting his patients. And yet Kenneth loves Con the best, and pets her the most, and talks sometimes to her of the Connie far away, whom he would give worlds to see, and from whom he seldom hears.
When Hal came of age, and the management of his property was turned over to him, he found everything straight to a penny, but was disappointed that his fortune was not larger. With his tastes and habits he wanted a great deal of money, and he spent a great deal, and would have borrowed of Kenneth, if his cousin would have loaned him. Once he offered to mortgage his house, but Kenneth refused, with the result that there sprung up a coolness on Harry’s part, and for a long time he neither came home nor wrote. Then suddenly he appeared one day, gracious and good-natured as ever, delighted to see the old place, proud of Kenneth’s success, and very affectionate to his aunt. Kenneth felt sure he had something in his mind. “Only wait and it will come out,” he thought, and that night, when they were seated upon the piazza, enjoying the cool breeze, he told them what he wanted.
CHAPTER IX
THE HOUSE PARTY
Sitting next to his aunt, with his arm on the back of her chair, Harry, after a cough or two and a furtive look at Kenneth, began to unfold his plan. He wanted to invite five or six swells to his house across the way, he said. He had thought of it when he was a boy and spent a vacation with Tom Haynes in Kentucky. Tom had had one the fall before and so had another comrade, and when they heard of his big house untenanted, they said it was just the place “to paint red,” off there in the country, where no one could be disturbed with their nightly revels, or threaten them with the police, as had once been done.
“I told them the house was scarcely habitable,” he said, “and that only made them the fiercer. It would be like camping out, and they are resolved to come.”
“And do they still think us ‘niggers’?” Kenneth asked, remembering Hal’s letter.
“Oh, pshaw!” was Harry’s laughing reply. “That was all a joke. Tom and the rest of ’em know you are a rising doctor, and that uncle and aunt are the nicest old couple in the world. Aren’t you, Aunt Mary?”
He had his arm around her neck, and was looking at her with the soft, pleading eyes to which she always yielded.