The Doctor : a Tale of the Rockies | Page 3

this."
"Here then," replied his father, handing him the violin, "and you're
better at this."
"They would not say so to-night, Dad," replied the lad as he took the
violin from his father's hands, looking it over reverently. In a very few
minutes his father came back with the scythe ready for work; and
Barney, fastening it to the snath, again set off up the lane.

II
THE DAUGHTER OF THE MANSE
Two hours later, down from the dusty sideroad, a girl swinging a milk
pail in her hand turned into the mill lane. As she stepped from the glare
and dust of the highroad into the lane, it seemed as if Nature had been
waiting to find in her the touch that makes perfect; so truly, in all her
fresh daintiness, did she seem a bit of that green shady lane with its
sweet fragrance and its fresh beauty.
It had taken sixteen years of wholesome country life to round that

supple form into its firm lines of grace, and to tint those moulded
cheeks with the dainty bloom that seemed a reflection from the thistle
heads that nodded at her through the snake fence. It had taken sixteen
years of pure-hearted, joyous living to lend those eyes, azure as the sky
above, their brave, clear glance; sixteen years of unsullied maidenhood
to endow her with that divine something of mystery which, with its shy
reserve and fearless trust, awakens reverence and rebukes impurity as
with the vision of God.
Her sunbonnet, fallen back from her yellow hair, shining golden in the
sun, revealed a face strong, brave and kind, with just a touch of pride.
The pride showed most, however, in the poise of her head and the
carriage of her shoulders. But when the mobile lips parted in a smile
over the straight rows of white teeth one forgot the pride and thought
only of the soft persuasive lips.
As she sprang up the green turf, she drew in deep breaths of
clover-scented air, and exclaimed aloud, "Oh, this is good!" She peeped
through the snake fence at the luscious rich masses of red clover.
"What a bed!" she cried; "I believe I'll try it." Over the fence she sprang,
and in a thorn tree's shade, deep in the fragrant blossoms, she stretched
herself at full length upon her back. For some minutes she lay in the
luxury of that fragrant bed looking up through the spreading thorn tree
branches to the blue sky with its floating, fleecy clouds far overhead.
The lazy drone of the bees in the clover beside her, the languorous
summer airs swaying into gentle nodding the timothy stalks just above
her head, and all the soothing sounds of a summer morning, that
many-voiced choir that sings to the great God Nature's glad content that
all is so very good, rested and comforted the girl's heart and body,
making her know as she had not known before how very weary she had
been and how deep an ache her heart had held.
"Oh, it's good!" she cried again, stretching her hands at full length
above her head. "I wish I could stay for one whole day, just here in the
clover with the bees and the birds and the trees and the clouds and the
blue sky, no children, no dinner, no tidying up."
As she lay there it seemed to her as if she had thrown off for the

moment the load she had been carrying for many months. For a year
she had tried to fill in the minister's household her mother's place.
Without a day's warning the burden had been laid upon her shoulders,
but with the fine courage that youth and love combine to give, denying
herself even the poor luxury of indulgence of the grief that had fallen
upon her young heart, she had given herself, without thought of
anything heroic in her giving, to the caring for the house and the
household, and the comforting as best she could of her father, suddenly
bereft of her who had been to him not wife alone, but comrade and
counsellor as well. Without a thought, she had at once surrendered all
the bright plans that she, with her mother, had cherished for the
cultivation of her varied talents, and had turned to the dull, monotonous
routine of household duties with never a thought but that she must do it.
There was no one else.
"I believe I am tired," she said again aloud; then letting her heart follow
her eyes into and beyond the blue above her, she cried softly, "O
mother, how tired you must have been with it all, and how much you
did for me! For me, great, big lump that I am! Dear little mother. Oh,