No more was said, for it was time to fetch the invalid and to send for the doctor. But later on, Mrs. Macneillie opened her heart to her son. “It’s all very well, Hugh,” she said, “to think that everything is made right by the little girl being in good hands for the time; but you mark my words, it will be the same story over again as your own. This poor lad will be shielding and helping Ivy Grant, and when she has other admirers, why she’ll throw him off like an old glove. It will be your own story over again, Hugh.” “I hope not,” said Macneillie. “Let us believe he would have done as much for any distressed damsel. He is a generous fellow, and every inch a gentleman; why must we assume that he has fallen in love with the lassie?” “Didn’t I find him sobbing his heart out the moment he was left to himself?” said Mrs. Macneillie. But at this her son would do nothing but laugh, “My dear mother,” he said, “That is just the sure and certain sign that he has the influenza, but as to that far worse malady no sign whatever.” CHAPTER XVII “So, from the pinched soil of a churlish fate, True hearts compel the sap of sturdier growth, And between earth and heaven stand simply great, That these shall seem but their attendants both.” Lowell. |For some days Ralph gave his new friends a good deal of anxiety; no doubt the worry and the underfeeding of the past nine months had told upon him, and culminating in this week of hardship and exposure had left him very ill-fitted to resist the modern plague which was scourging the country. By the time he had turned the corner and was able to spend part of each day in the adjoining room, he had wound himself very closely about the hearts both of the mother and the son. For there was something in his blithe cheerfulness which was very winning and which not even the depression that always accompanies influenza could affect for very long, any more than Sir Matthew Mactavish’s treatment could really embitter his nature, though it occasionally made him speak a few cynical words. Macneillie had by this time heard the story of his life, and had set his mind at rest by offering to have him in his company at the beginning of August. He wrote, moreover, to a friend of his, the manager of one of the Edinburgh theatres, and tried to obtain a temporary engagement for him, to fill up the summer months. To this there was for some days no response, and Ralph, who was beginning to chafe at the thought of his penniless condition, grew depressed, and with the sensitiveness of a convalescent feared that he was a burden to his kindly host. Macneillie was quick to discern what was passing in his mind. “Pining for that hospital you were so anxious to find at Callander?” he said one afternoon when he had found Ralph unusually depressed. The invalid smiled. “Not exactly. But I’m wishing I needn’t spoil your holiday.”.