“Oh, Jack!” cried she, advancing and placing both her hands in his, “a thousand welcomes. How surprised and glad I am to see you.”
The touch of her hands and the responsive message of love from her eyes were more than Dr. Jack Redfield could stand. He caught her quickly in his arms and tenderly kissed her willing lips. Mrs. Horton was engaged for the moment in a conversation with Hugh, and had not noticed Ethel’s greeting of Doctor Redfield. Not so, however, with her father.
“Oh, daddy,” said she, turning to him, “come and welcome Jack—I mean Doctor Redfield. He is my—my brain-worker; don’t you remember?”
“Welcome, thrice welcome, Doctor Redfield,” said Mr. Horton, cordially, as he extended his hand with all the warmth of greeting of a frontiersman.
That night when Hugh and Doctor Redfield were gone, Ethel excused herself and went to her room. She was humming an old love-song as she left the veranda, and seemed as lighthearted as some bird that had suddenly gained its freedom from a caged bondage.
“Ethel seems to be very contented and happy over her ride,” observed Mrs. Horton.
“I fancy, my dear, that there are other reasons,” replied her husband.
“Indeed, how is that?” asked his wife. John Horton replied by inquiring about Doctor Redfield.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Horton, “Doctor Redfield is a Chicagoan. He was my physician at Lake Geneva, and for awhile I feared that Ethel really cared for him.”
“And if she had?” observed Mr. Horton, interrogatively.