Lover or Friend

by Rosa Nouchette Carey

'I don't hold with sal volatile,' returned the Doctor a little grimly. 'Sleep is a far safer remedy, Emmie. Leave her to herself; she will be all right in a day or two.'

But Dr. Ross sighed as he got up and went to his study. Audrey little knew that her father was in the secret; that in his pain and perplexity Michael had at last taken his best friend into his confidence.

'We must leave things to work round,' had been his parting words to Michael that morning. 'No one, not even her father, must coerce her. All these years you have been like a son to me, Mike; and if my child could bring herself to love you as you deserve to be loved, no one would be better pleased than I should be.'

'And you will tell no one—not even Cousin Emmeline?'

'Why, I should not dare tell her,' returned the Doctor with rather a dejected smile, for he hated to keep things from his wife. 'Geraldine would get hold of it, and then it would come round to Harcourt. No, I will keep my own counsel, Mike. And now good-bye, and good luck to you!'

'It is the Burnett motto,' replied Michael, with a touch of solemnity in his voice—'"Good luck God send." Take care of her, Cousin John.'

And then the two men grasped hands and parted.

'If I had to search the whole world over for a husband for her, I'd choose Mike,' was Dr. Ross's thought as he drove himself back again to Woodcote.

Audrey kept her promise and made up for her one idle day. 'Work was good for everyone,' she said, 'and it was especially good for her.' So the following morning she resumed lessons with Mollie. She had complained a few weeks before that her German was becoming rusty, and by her father's advice she and Mollie were taking lessons together of Herr Freiligrath. The master she had selected was a very strict one, and his lessons entailed a great deal of preparation. No discipline could have been more wholesome. Audrey forgot her perplexities while she translated Wallenstein and followed the unhappy fortunes of Max and Theckla.

But she did not at once regain her cheerfulness, and the daily round of duty was not performed without a great deal of effort and inward prompting; if no task were left unfulfilled, if she were always ready to give her mother or Geraldine the companionship they needed, and if her father never missed one of her usual ministrations, it was because she would listen to no plea of self-indulgence.