Before Dick could protest he had opened the package.
“‘Summer reading for a young physician,’” he began, looking at the titles. “What have we here? Harris’ ‘Insects Injurious to Vegetation ‘The Butterfly Book,’ by Holland; ‘Special Report on the Spiders of Long Island’; ‘North American’—well, by my proud ancestral halls!”
“Give me those books, Ev!” said Dick sharply. “Little Everard, the Boy Wonder, has put a dainty foot in it again!” He laughed banteringly, looking from Dorothy Ravenden to Dick and back again. “Dick, too? Oh, Dolly, couldn’t you leave the family alone for my sake? Case of ‘Love me, love my bugs’!”
But even the much-allowanced Everard had gone too far. Dolly Ravenden turned upon him with an expression which boded ill for the venturesome young man, when a volume of song from the hallway, that seemed, controlled and effortless as it was, to fill full and permeate every farthest nook and corner of the house, stopped her. It was Helga singing a quaint and stirring old ballad.
“Where there is no place
For the glow-worm to lie,
Where there is no space
For receipt of a fly;
Where the midge dare not venture
Lest herself fast she lay,
If Love come he will enter
And will find out the way.”
“Heavens!” exclaimed Dick Colton. “What a voice! Who is it?”
“Haven’t you heard Helga sing?” said Dolly Ravenden, in surprise. “Isn’t it superb!”
Everard had risen and was looking hungrily toward the door. Dolly looked keenly at him, and saw in his face a look that she had seen in many a man’s eyes, but that no woman but one had ever before seen in Everard Colton’s.
“It is true,” she said to herself. The voice went on:
“There is no striving
To cross his intent,
There is no contriving
His plots to prevent;
For if once the message greet him
That his true-love doth stay,
Though Death come forth to meet him,
Love will find out the way.”