"I think you will have an opportunity," said Elizabeth, "if you have a little patience."
"I will notify you meanwhile, Elizabeth. The Clam Beds Protective Company meets here next Saturday at nine o'clock. In uniform, with arms and equipment. If you lack anything, speak to Eve. I'm sorry to make it quite so early, but the tide, you know—and Eve has set the day."
"I'm going to have a birthday party for Jack Ogilvie, Elizabeth. It's a little late, but I didn't know in time, and Jimmy and Bobby and Ogilvie can come then, I think. I wish you'd tell me something more about him."
"About Jack? What shall I tell you? I've known him always, since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. He's as good as there is made. His family are nice people, with a very moderate income, just about enough to keep them going, and not enough to put him through college, although they would be willing to sacrifice a good deal to do it. But Jack prefers to put himself through, and he was doing it very well until he went into the navy. He has been preparing for that for a year or more. He doesn't make nearly as much in the navy, even as an ensign—but I don't know about that. I guess he does. An ensign's pay is pretty good for a boy of twenty-one."
"And his father," Eve pursued; "what does he do? Is he in some great office, grinding away for Jack?"
Elizabeth smiled again. "No. He is a country doctor, and a very good one. I don't know what the town would do without him. But a country doctor, you know, can't make much."
"I'm glad," said Eve.
"Why? Because he can't make much?"
Eve laughed. "Glad that he's a doctor. I wish I could manage to swell his income."