Sweetapple Cove | Page 5

somewhere. I must grope about to find my share of them, for I feel like
the ship that did not find itself till it encountered a storm or two. If I
promised to meet you next week you would keep on hoping. Do plunge
right in now instead of shivering on the bank."
"Don't trouble about any more metaphors," I told her. "You promise to
go home within a year?"
"I firmly intend to," she replied, "but you can't always depend on a
woman's plans."
"If I can't depend on you I have very little left to believe in," I declared.
"I'm pretty sure I'll come," she said, "and--and God bless you, John!"
So we separated there, in the silent street, before the nurses' home
where she had taken a room a few days after her graduation. I couldn't
trust myself to say anything more.
The door closed upon her and I slowly walked back to my quarters,

with a head full of dreary thoughts, and several times narrowly escaped
speeding taxis and brought down upon myself some picturesque
language.
I fear that I was hardly in a mood to appreciate its beauty.
CHAPTER II
From John Grant's Diary
Four weeks ago, this evening, I sat with Dora in that bright dining room
at the Rochambeau. My description of that last meeting of ours is a
rather flippant one, I fancy, but some feminine faces are improved by
powder, and some men's sentiments by a veneer of assumed
cheerfulness. That cut of mine has not the slightest intention of healing
by first intention; it is gaping as widely as ever, as far as I can judge.
Yet I am glad I made no further effort. I suppose a man had better stop
before he gets himself disliked.
Yesterday morning I came out of a dilapidated dwelling in which I had
spent the whole night, and scrambled away over some rocks. When I
sat down my legs were hanging over a chasm at the foot of which
grandly rolling waves burst into foam, keeping up the warfare waged
during a million years against our sturdy cliffs.
Rays of dulled crimson sought to penetrate, feebly, through the fog, as
if the sun knew only too well how often it had been defeated in its
contest against the murky vapors of this hazy land.
My meeting with Mr. Barnett on the Rosalind was a most fortunate
accident. The earnest little clergyman sat next to me at the table, and
immediately engaged me in conversation. I gathered from him that he
had been begging in the great city and had managed to collect a very
few hundred dollars for his little church. He spoke most cheerfully of
all that he meant to achieve with all this wealth.
"I am going to have the steeple finished," he said. "It will take but a
few feet of lumber, and we still have half a keg of nails. Some day I

expect to have a little reading room, and perhaps a magic lantern. I will
try to give them some short lectures. I am ambitious, and hope that I am
not expecting too much. We are really doing very nicely at Sweetapple
Cove."
"Where is that?" I asked him.
The little parson gave me the desired geographical information and,
finding me interested, began to speak of his work.
He was one of the small band of devoted men whose lives are spent on
the coast, engaged in serving their fellow-men to the best of their
abilities. The extent of his parish was scarcely limited by the ability of
a fishing boat to travel a day's journey, and he spoke very modestly of
some rather narrow escapes from storm and ice.
"If we only had a doctor!" he sighed. "Mrs. Barnett and I do our best.
Things are sometimes just heartrending."
At once I manifested interest, and angled for further information. This
was just the sort of place I had in mind. It appeared that the nearest
doctor was more than a day's travel away, and that the population was
rather too poor to afford the luxury of professional advice.
"We sometimes feel very hopeless," he told me.
"How do you reach Sweetapple Cove?" I asked him.
"There will be a little schooner in a few days," he answered.
"I am a physician," I announced, "and am looking for exactly that kind
of a practice."
We were strolling on the deck at this time. Mr. Barnett turned quickly
and grasped my arm.
"There is hardly a dollar there for you," he said. "No sane man would
come to such a place to practice. And there is a little hardship in that
sort of work. You don't realize it."

"I am under the impression that it is just the place for me,"