ile. Now, Marjorie, aren't you going to play for us?"
Gilbert went home, wondering over this strange young woman, and feeling
toward her a strong impatience. Either she did not know the magnitude
of the talent she possessed, or she was wofully lacking in ambition.
With that voice, and a little spirit, there was nothing she might not
accomplish; while here she was, content to feed chickens, and carry
eggs to the corner store, with the placid assurance that she "had had
enough lessons for a while." If she had not been so stately, he felt
he would like to shake her.
He did not meet her again for some time; for even when he found leisure
to attend a social gathering, she was seldom present. But he was on
the lookout for her. He determined that the next time he met her he
would give her some much-needed advice. She ought to be stirred up.
These country folk had no ambition.
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 Gil
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