“My dear doctor, isn’t it better to meet the lions, and take one’s chance, than to be preyed upon by restlessness and discontent till the whole of one’s character is worm-eaten?” asked Anne, quietly.
The doctor stooped to examine the Purple Emperor which still lay motionless, basking in the sunshine.
When he raised his head Anne saw the trouble in his eyes.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he said. Then abruptly, after a moment, “I wish I could give Madge the life that would suit her!” he exclaimed, jerking out the words awkwardly.
Miss Page waited a moment. “What do you think would suit her?” she asked gently.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “She wants to live in London, you know. She wants a gayer life. But I should be no use in town. I shouldn’t make a living even. I haven’t the manner. It’s as much as I can do to hold my own here.”
“Every one who knows you, ends by being thankful to find a splendid friend as well as an excellent doctor,” returned Anne.
The bitterness in his face softened. “If all the world were like you,” he began with a little laugh, and paused. “I’m glad they’re not, though. There must only be one Miss Page. But that’s it,” he went on, “I must know people well—better than one could ever know them in the rush of a London practice, where the polished manner I don’t possess is absolutely necessary.”
There was a silence, while they walked the length of the grass path together.
“I ought never to have married Madge,” he broke out at last, in a low voice. “She’s too pretty, and too gay by nature, for a slow coach like me. This village life is too dull for her. She wants her dances, her theatres”—he made a vague gesture—“all that sort of thing. I can’t make her happy.”