“Were you up then?”
“Oh, yes, sir. I always get up early to milk and put the cabin in order before I come over here. It will be a little while before breakfast. Shall I get you a cup of coffee now?”
“That would be very kind of you! I am famished, and perhaps a cup of coffee would keep me from disgracing myself when breakfast is ready.”
Gwen had changed a great deal in the few weeks since she had come so shyly from behind the bowlder to offer herself as factotum to Lewis and Bill. She still had the modest demeanor, but had lost her extreme shyness and also much of her primness. She was now a more natural girl of fourteen, thanks to Nan and Lucy, who had tried to make her feel at home with them. Shoes and stockings had helped her to recover from her timidity. She had always had an idea that people were looking at her bare feet. Over her skimpy little dress she now wore a bungalow apron, which was vastly becoming to her Puritan type of beauty. The first money she made had been spent on shoes and aprons. Helen had wanted to present her with these things, but Gwen and Josh were alike in wanting nothing they had not honestly earned.
As the girl came towards the doctor, bearing in her steady little brown hands a tray with a smoking cup of coffee and a hot buttered roll, just to tide him over until breakfast, he thought he had never seen a more attractive child.
“And it wasn’t because she was feeding me, either,” he said to Helen later on, “but because she had such a fine upstanding look to her and because her hand was so capable and steady and her gaze so open and honest. No great lady, trained in the social graces, could have handed one a cup of coffee with more assurance and ease of manner.”
“Miss Helen was asking for you,” said Gwen, as she put down the delectable tray.
“Oh, is she all right?” and the physician jumped up, ready to leave his untasted food if he were needed.
“Oh, yes, she is as well as can be, and when I took her some coffee early this morning, she told me she had slept so well and was famished for food. I am going to straighten up her tent just as soon as the girls are out of it, so you can go in to see her. I told her I had seen you taking a walk at four o’clock. She wants to see you.”