The door suddenly opened. Both young men started.
A young woman entered the office.
"Mr. Kimball, Mr. Foster!" she exclaimed, as the boys looked at her in surprise. "I am so sorry!"
It was Miss Robbins.
"We are very glad to see you," said Jack. "We need all sorts of doctors. Belle is very ill, and the others are not far from it."
"And Cora?" she asked anxiously.
"No news," said Jack, as cheerfully as he could.
"Listen. I must tell you while I have a chance--before I see the girls. The man I stayed over to nurse is my brother!"
CHAPTER XXIII
ANOTHER STORY
"Oh, Miss Robbins!" exclaimed Belle.
"My dear! I am so sorry to see you ill!"
"Yes, but Cora----"
"Hush, my dear. You will not get strong while you worry so. Of course, you cannot stop at once, but you must try."
Hazel, Betty and Bess had withdrawn. What a relief it was already to have some one who just knew how to control Belle. It had been so difficult for the young girls to try to console her, and her nerves had worked so sadly upon their own.
"I suppose you thought I was a perfectly dreadful young woman," said Dr.
Robbins cheerily. "But you did not know (she sighed effectively) that every one has her own troubles, while a doctor has her own and a whole lot of others."
"Had you trouble?" Belle asked sympathetically.
"Indeed I had, and still have. You should know. But wait, I"ll just call the girls in and make a clean breast of it. It will save me further trouble."
The tactful young doctor had planned to tell her story as much for the purpose of diverting Belle"s mind as for any other reason. She called to the girls, who were in an adjoining room. How the strain of that one dreadful week had told upon their fresh young faces! Bess had almost lost her peach-blow; Hazel, never highly colored, but always bright of eye, showed signs even of pallor; Betty had put on too much color, that characteristic of the excitable disposition when the skin is the thermometer of the nerves, and her eyes not only sparkled, but actually glittered. All this was instantly apparent to the trained eye of the young doctor.
"Come in, girls," she said. "I have decided to make a full confession."
They looked at her in astonishment. What could she mean? Might she have married the sick man? This thought flashed into the mind of more than one of the party.
"You thought I deserted you?" began Miss Robbins.
"It looked like it," murmured Bess.
"Well, when I went out on that lawn to work over the injured, I found there a long-lost brother!"
"Brother?"
"Yes, really. It is a strange story, but for three years mother and I have tried every means to find Leland. He was such a beautiful young fellow, and such a joy to us, but he got interested in social problems, and got to thinking that the poor were always oppressed, and all that sort of thing. Well, he had just finished college, and we hoped for such great things, when, after some warning enthusiasm, he disappeared."
"Ran away?" asked Hazel.
"Well, we thought at first he was drowned, for he used to sit for hours on the beach talking to fishermen. But I never thought he had met with any such misfortune. Leland is one of the individuals born to live. He is too healthy, too splendid, a chap to up and die. Of course, mother thought he must be dead, or he would not keep her in anxiety, but that is the way these reformer minds usually work--spare your own and lose the cause."
"And what did happen?" asked Betty, all interested.
"I happened to find him. There he lay, with his wonderful blond hair burned in ugly spots, and his baby complexion almost----"
"Oh! are all his good looks gone?" gasped Belle--she who always stood up for the beautiful in everything, even in young men.
"I hope not gone forever," said the doctor, "but, indeed, poor boy, he had a narrow escape."
"But whatever took him into the kitchen?" asked Bess.
"He went down there among the foreigners to study actual conditions. Did you ever hear of anything so idiotic? But that is his hobby. He has been into all kinds of labor during these three long, sorrowful years."
"And you were helping your own brother! And we--blamed you!" It was Belle who spoke.
"I could not blame you for so doing. I had been enjoined to secrecy the very moment poor Leland laid his eyes on me. He begged me not even to send word to mother, as he said it would spoil the research of an entire year if he had to stop his work before the summer was entirely over."
"But he could not work--he is ill?" said Bess.
"Still, you see, he could keep among the men he had cla.s.sed himself with, and that is his idea of duty. I let mother know I had found him in spite of his "ideas," but I did not tell her much more."
"Will he not go home with you?" asked Hazel.
"He has promised to give up cooking by October first. Then I am going to collect him."
"What an interesting young man he must be," remarked Belle, to whom the story had already brought some brightness.
"Oh, indeed he is," declared Miss Robbins. "He is younger than I, and when I went to college he promised to do all sorts of stunts to prove my problems. He even wanted to try living, or dying, on one sort of food; wanted to remain up without sleeping until he fell over; wanted to sleep in dark cellars to see what effect that would have; in fact, I thought we would have to lock him up with a bodyguard to save his life, he was so enthusiastic about my profession. And as to anti-vivisection! Why, at one time he had twenty-five cats and four dogs in our small city yard to save them from the possible fate of some of their kind. I tell you, we had our hands full with pretty Leland."
"I should love him," said Belle suddenly and emphatically.
Every one laughed. It was actually the first real smile that had broken the sadness of their lives in that long, dreary week. Belle returned the charge with a contemptuous glance.
"I mean, of course, I should love him as a friend of humanity," she answered.
"Cats and dogs!" exclaimed Betty.
"A friend of dumb animals is always a friend of humans," insisted Belle.
Dr. Robbins smiled. Her cure was already working, and, while her story was correct, the recital of it had done more for those girls than had any other attempted cure of their melancholy.