Glory of Youth | Page 3

to do wonderful things in the city."

"Wonderful things--poor little girl----"
As he brought his eyes back from the fire to her face, he seemed to
bring his thoughts back from an uneasy reverie.
"You ought," he said, "to marry----"
The color flamed into the girl's cheeks. "Mother was always saying that,
in those last days. But I hated to have her; it seemed so dreadful to talk
of marriage--without love. I know she didn't mean it that way, poor
darling! She married for love and her life was such a failure. But I
couldn't--not just to get married, could I--not just to have some one take
care of me?"
He stood up, and thrust his hands in his pockets. "No," he agreed
bluffly, "you couldn't, of course."
"And there's never been any one in love with me," was her naive
confession, "and I've never been in love, not really----"
He was looking down at her with smiling eyes. "There's plenty of
time."
"Yes--that's what I always told mother--but she dreaded to think of
me--alone."
The eager, dying woman had said the same thing to the doctor, and it
had seemed to him, sometimes, that her burning eyes had begged of
him a favor which he could not grant.
For there had always been--Diana!
He straightened his shoulders. "I'm going to ask you to stay here," he
said, "instead of going to the city. I haven't any real right to keep you,
for I'm not legally your guardian, but I promised your mother to look
after you. I can find work for you. We need some one at the sanatorium
to look after the office----"
For a moment she set her will against his. "But I'd rather go to the city."

He put his strong hands on her shoulders. "Little child, look at me," he
said, and when she flashed up at him a startled glance, he went on,
gently, "Your mother wanted me to take care of you--to keep you from
harm. In the city you'll be too far away. I want you to stay here. Will
you?"
And presently she whispered, "I will stay."
Outside the rain was rushing and the wind was blowing, and plain little
Miss Matthews battled with the storm. Miss Matthews, who, every day
in the year, taught a class of tumultuous children, and whose life dealt
always with the commonplace. And it was plain little Miss Matthews
who, having weathered the storm and climbed the winding stairs, came
in, rain-coated and soft-hatted, to find by the fire the doctor drawing on
his gloves and Bettina hovering about him like a gold-tipped butterfly.
"It's a dreadful storm," said Miss Matthews, superfluously, as Bettina
went to get boiling water. "There's a young man down-stairs who wants
to speak to you, Dr. Blake. He said that he couldn't find you at the
sanatorium. He saw your car in front of the house and knew you were
here. But the bell wouldn't ring, and so he waited. I told him the bell
was broken and that you'd come down at once. He's hurt his hand."
"They would have fixed him up at the sanatorium."
"He said he wanted you, and nobody else, and that he came into the hall
because he was like a pussy cat and hated the rain. He is a queer
looking creature in a leather cap and leather leggins."
The doctor gave an amused laugh. "That's Justin Ford," he said; "the
pussy-cat speech sounds like him, and he wears the leather costume
when he flies."
Bettina, coming back with fresh tea for Miss Matthews, asked, "How
does he fly?"
"In an aeroplane. He's to try out his hydro-aeroplane to-morrow. He's
probably been at work on the machinery and hurt his hand."

Bettina sparkled. "Think of a man who can fly," she said. "Doesn't it
sound incredible?"
"It's the most marvelous thing in the world," said the big-hearted
surgeon, not knowing that he, as a man of healing, was more marvelous,
for he had to do with the mechanics of flesh and blood, while Justin
had to do only with steel and aluminum and canvas, which are, at best,
unimportant things when compared with nerves and ligaments and
bones.
"Would you mind if Ford came up?" the doctor asked. "I've got to go
straight to my old man with the pneumonia after I leave here, and I
could look at his hand."
Bettina shivered. "Shall I have to look at it?" she asked in a little voice.
He laughed. "Of course not. You can go in the other room."
But when the young man, who had answered the doctors call, entered,
she did not go, for the face which was framed by the leather cap was
that of a youth whose beauty matched her own, and whose