Her brother seemed to have no lack of it, he discovered. He took young
Malcolm with him to see a patient occasionally, and on one long drive
the boy confided in him something of the struggle it had been to give
them all an education. It was a lucky thing that Elsie didn't want to
go on with her music, he said, for the expense of her training would be
so great that both he and Jean would have to stay home for some years,
and Jean was dying to go to the high school in the fall. Both Uncle
Hughie and mother had declared that Elsie must have first chance, but
Elsie didn't want to go, and it certainly was lucky, though they were
all sorry, of course, that she wasn't going on.
Gilbert wondered a little over the lad's remarks, but forgot them until
the next occasion when he met Miss Cameron.
He had been up to see a patient among the Glenoro hills, and was
driving homeward. The road was a narrow, lonely one, winding here and
there through the dense wood. On either side the trees and underbrush
made a towering green wall. Through it the eye could catch occasional
glimpses of the flower-spangled earth, or a vista of splendid trunks
with the sunlight making golden splashes on their spreading boughs.
Gilbert pulled up Speed and drove slowly. Her hoofs made but a
smothered pad, pad in the soft leaf-mold. The air was cool, and laden
with the delicious scents of moss and bracken and leaf-strewn earth.
Far away in the green depths a whitethroat was sending forth his long,
clear, silvery call, in endless praise of "Canada! Canada! Canada!"
As Gilbert turned a curve in the road a figure appeared ahead, a figure
that seemed to add the finishing touch to the almost perfect scene--a
girl, her arms full of marigolds, walking along the flower-bordered
pathway.
She wore a pale-green gown, her bronze hair was shaded by a big straw
hat, and she seemed a harmonious part of the gold-and-green picture of
the summer woods.
The young doctor drew up at her side. She was a little pale and
weary-looking from her long, hot walk, and she gladly accepted his
invitation to ride. Jim had needed another man for the haying, she
said, and she was the only one who could be spared to go and seek one;
she was very fortunate to get a ride home.
As Gilbert helped her into his buggy he looked at her wonderingly. Was
she really content with her homely tasks, or could it be possible that
she was making this sacrifice voluntarily?
"Can you be quite content to settle down here in Elmbrook, when you
might be making fame for yourself in a big city?" he asked. "I don't
believe you realize that you might some day move throngs with your
voice."
She smiled, with a tinge of sadness. "Well, you see, I am quite sure
of my work here," she said half playfully, "and one could never be
certain of a steady supply of 'moved throngs.'"
"You could," he cried earnestly. "You are wasting your talents."
She shook her head. "It is better to waste one's talents than
something better."