Doctor Churchill looked at the curly black head bent closely over the last of the little sleeves.
"You don"t deceive me, Miss Charlotte," said he. "You"re not as wedded to that task as you look. Please come with me. There"s time for a magnificent hour before you have to put the kettle on. Miss Birch, I wish we could take you, too. Next winter--well, that knee is doing so well I dare to promise you all the skating you want."
Celia looked up at him, smiling, but her eyes were wistful.
"Doctor," cried Captain Rayburn, "telephone to the stables for a comfortable old horse and sleigh, will you? Celia, girl, we"ll go, too."
"And I"ll look after Ellen," said Mrs. Fields, before anybody could mention the baby. "Go on, all of you."
"May we all come back to supper with you?" asked Doctor Churchill, giving her a glance with which she was familiar of old.
"If you"ll send for some oysters I"ll give you all hot stew," she said, and received such a chorus of applause that she mentally added several items to the treat.
"Now I can enjoy my fun," whispered Charlotte to Celia, as she brought her sister"s wraps, and pulled on her own rough brown coat. "Such a jolly uncle, isn"t he?"
"The best in the world. Wear your white tam, dear, and the white mittens. They look so well with your brown suit. Tie the white silk scarf about your neck--that"s it. Now run. I"m so afraid somebody will call the doctor out and spoil it all."
Charlotte ran, and found the doctor waiting impatiently, two pairs of skates on his arm. He hurried her away down the street.
"We must get all there is of this," he said. "I feel as if I could skate fifty miles and back again. Do you?"
"Indeed I do. I"ve wanted to get up and run round the block between every two st.i.tches all day."
"They say the river is good for three miles up. That will give us just what we want--a sensation of running away from the earth and all its cares. And when we get back we"ll be ready for Fieldsy"s stew."
They found everybody on the river; Charlotte was busy nodding to her friends while the doctor put on her skates. In a few moments the two were flying up the course.
"Oh, this is great!" exulted Doctor Churchill. "And this is the first time you"ve been on the ice this winter--in February!"
"This is fine enough to make up. I do love it. It takes out all the puckers."
"Doesn"t it? I thought you"d been cultivating puckers to-day the minute I saw you--or else I interpreted your mood by my own. Talk about puckers--and nerves! Miss Charlotte, I"ve done my first big operation in a certain line to-day. I mean, in a new line--an experiment. It was--a success."
She looked up at him, her face full of sympathy. "Oh, I"m so glad!" she said.
"Are you? Thank you! I wanted somebody to be glad--and I hadn"t anybody.
I had to tell you. It"s too soon to be absolutely sure, but it promises so well I"m daring to be happy. It"s the sort of operation in which the worst danger is practically over if the patient gets through the operation itself. She"s rallied beautifully. And whatever happens, I"ve proved my point--that the experiment is feasible. Some of the men doubted that--all thought it a big risk. But I had to take it, and now--Ah, come on, Miss Charlotte! Let"s fly!"
Away they went, faster and faster--long, swinging strokes in perfect unison; two accomplished skaters with one object in view; working off healthy young spirits at a tension. They did not talk; they saved their breath; they went like the wind itself.
At the farthest extremity of the smooth ice, which ended at a little frost-bound waterfall, they came to a stop. Churchill looked down at a face like a rose, black eyes that were all alight, and lips that smiled with the fresh happiness of the fine sport.
"I"ve skated at Copenhagen and at St. Petersburg," he said gaily, "to say nothing of Fresh Pond and Lake Superior and other such home grounds.
But it"s safe to say I never enjoyed a mile of them like that last one.
You--you were really glad, weren"t you, that it went so well with me to-day?"
"How could I help it, Doctor Churchill?" she answered, earnestly. Ever since coming out she had been remembering the little revelation his housekeeper had made of his life, and it had touched her deeply to know why he had come to settle in the suburban town instead of in the much more promising city field--a question which had occurred to her many times since she had known him.
"I always expected," he went on, in a more quiet way, "to be able to come home and tell my mother about my first triumphs. She would have been so proud and happy over the smallest thing. Her father was a distinguished surgeon--Marchmont of Baltimore. He died only four years ago--his books are an authority on certain subjects. My other grandfather was Dr. Andrew Churchill of Glasgow--an old-school physician and a good one. So you see I come honestly by my love for it all. And mother--how we used to talk it all over--"
He stopped abruptly, with a tightening of the lips, and stood staring off over the frozen fields, his eyes growing sombre. Charlotte"s own eyes fell; her heart beat fast with sympathy. She laid the lightest of touches on his arm.
"I know," she said, softly. "Fieldsy told me--a little bit. I"m so sorry."
He drew a long breath and looked down at her, his eyes searching her face. "You _are_ a little comrade," he said, and his voice was low and moved. Then with a quick motion he seized her hands again and they were off, back down the river. Not so fast as before, and silently, the two skaters covered the miles, and only as they came within sight of the crowd of people at the beginning of the course did Doctor Churchill speak.
"This has been a fine hour, hasn"t it?" he said. "Your face looks as if you had lost all the puckers. Have you?"
"Indeed I have! Haven"t you?"
"It has done me a world of good. I was wrought up to a high pitch--now I"m cool again. I have to go back to the hospital as soon as supper is over. I shall stay all night."
"When you get back," said Charlotte, "will you telephone me how the case is doing?"
"May I?" he answered, eagerly.
"Of course you may. I shall be anxious till I know."
"I have no business to add one smallest item of anxiety to your list of worries," he admitted. "But it seems so good to me to have somebody care, just now. Fieldsy"s a dear soul--I couldn"t get on without her, but--Never mind, that"s enough of Andrew Churchill for one afternoon.
Shall we make a big spurt to the finish? Let"s show them what skating is--no little cutting of geometrical spider-webs in a forty-foot square!"
They drew in with swift, graceful strokes, threaded their course through the crowd of skaters, and were soon on their way home. Captain Rayburn and Celia pa.s.sed them, called back that it was a great day for invalids and children, and reached home just in time for the doctor to carry Celia into the little brick house. Charlotte ran to summon her three brothers, for it was after six o"clock.
Never had an oyster stew such enthusiastic praise. Not an appet.i.te was lacking, not a spoon flagged. Mrs. Fields, moved to lavish hospitality, in which she was upheld by the doctor, produced a chicken pie, which had been originally intended for his dinner alone, and which she had at first designed, when she proposed the oysters, to keep over until the morrow. This was flanked by various dishes, impromptu but delectable, and followed by a round of winter fruit and spongecake--the latter the pride of the housekeeper"s heart, and dear to her master from old a.s.sociation.
"If you live like this all the time, Doctor Churchill," said John Lansing Birch, leaning back in his chair at last with the air of a man who asks no more of the G.o.ds, "I advise you to keep up a bachelor establishment to the end of your days."
"How would that suit you, Mrs. Fields?" asked the doctor, laughing.
Mrs. Fields, from her place at the end of the table--they had insisted on having her sit down with them--answered deliberately:
"As long as a man"s a man I suppose nothing on earth ever will make him feel so satisfied with himself and all creation as being set down in front of a lot of eatables. Now what gives me most peace of mind to-night is knowing that that little Ellen Donohue, asleep on my bed, has got enough new clothes, by this day"s work, to make a very good beginning of an outfit."
"Now, how do you old bachelors feel?" cried Celia, amidst laughter, and the party broke up.
At ten o"clock that evening, when Charlotte had seen her sister comfortably in bed--for Celia still needed help in undressing--had tucked in Just and warned Jeff that it was bedtime, the telephone-bell rang.
Lanse and Captain Rayburn sat reading in the living-room, where the telephone stood upon a desk, and Lanse, who was near it, moved lazily to answer it. But before he could lift the receiver to his ear Charlotte had run into the room and was taking it from him, murmuring, "It"s for me--I"m sure it is."
"Well, I could have called you," said Lanse, looking curiously at her as, with cheeks like poppies, she sat down at the desk and answered.
With ears wide open, although he had again taken up the magazine he had laid down, he listened to Charlotte"s side of the conversation. It was brief, and no more remarkable than such performances are apt to be, but Lanse easily appreciated the fact that it was giving his sister immense satisfaction.
"Hullo--yes--yes!" she called. "Yes--oh, _is_ she? Yes--yes, I"m so glad! Yes--of course you are. I"m _so_ glad! Thank you. Yes--Good night!" Charlotte hung up the receiver and swung round from the desk, her face radiant, her eyes like stars.
"Is she, indeed?" interrogated Lanse, lifting brotherly, penetrating eyes to her face. "Engagement just announced? When is she to be married?
I"m glad you"re glad--you might so easily have been jealous."
Charlotte laughed--a ripple of merriment which was contagious, for Captain Rayburn smiled over the evening paper, and Lanse himself grinned cheerfully.