were ‘tiptop.’ Her table manners—poor child! I ran away from the table and cried like a baby the first time I saw her eat; and yet—perhaps the very next thing she does will be so dainty and sweet that I could declare the other was all a dream. Doctor, what shall I do?”
“I know, I know,” nodded the man. “I have seen it myself. But, dear, she’ll learn—she’ll learn wonderfully fast. You’ll see. It’s in her—the gentleness and the refinement. She’ll have to be corrected, some, of course; it’s out of the question that she shouldn’t be. But she’ll come out straight. Her heart is all right.”
Mrs. Kendall laughed softly.
“Her heart, doctor!” she exclaimed. “Just there lies the greatest problem of all. The one creed of her life is to ‘divvy up,’ and how I’m going to teach her ordinary ideas of living without shattering all her faith in me I don’t know. Why, Harry,”—Mrs. Kendall’s voice was tragic—“she gazes at me with round eyes of horror because I have two coats and two hats, and two loaves of bread, and haven’t yet ‘divvied up’ with some one who has none. So far her horror is tempered by the fact that she is sure I didn’t know before that there were any people who did not have all these things. Now that she has told me of them, she confidently looks to me to do my obvious duty at once.”
The doctor laughed.
“As if you weren’t always doing things for people,” he said fondly. Then he grew suddenly grave. “The dear child! I’m afraid that along with her education and civilization her altruism will get a few hard knocks. But—she’ll get over that, too. You’ll see. At heart she’s so gentle and—why, what”—he broke off with an unspoken question, his eyes widely opened at the change that had come to her face.
“Oh, nothing,” returned Mrs. Kendall, almost despairingly, “only if you’d seen Joe Bagley yesterday morning I’m afraid you’d have changed your opinion of her gentleness. She—she fought him!” Mrs. Kendall stumbled over the words, and flushed a painful red as she spoke them.
“Fought him—Joe Bagley!” gasped the doctor. “Why, he’s almost twice her size.”
“Yes, I know, but that didn’t seem to occur to Margaret,” returned Mrs. Kendall. “She saw only the kitten he was tormenting, and—well, she rescued the kitten, and then administered what she deemed to be fit punishment there and then. When I arrived on the scene they were the center of an admiring crowd of children,”—Mrs. Kendall shivered visibly—“and Margaret was just delivering herself of a final blow that sent the great bully off blubbering.”
“Good for her!”—it was an involuntary tribute, straight from the heart.
“Harry!” gasped Mrs. Kendall. “‘Good’—a delicate girl!”
“No, no, of course not,” murmured the doctor, hastily, though his eyes still glowed. “It won’t do, of course; but you must remember her life, her struggle for very existence all those years. She had to train her fists to fight her way.”
“I—I suppose so,” admitted Mrs. Kendall, faintly; but she shivered again, as if with a sudden chill.
CHAPTER III
Scarcely had Houghtonsville recovered from its first shock of glad surprise at Margaret’s safe return, when it was shaken again to its very center by the news of Mrs. Kendall’s engagement to Dr. Spencer.
The old Kendall estate had been for more than a generation the “show place” of the town. Even during the years immediately following the loss of little Margaret, when the great stone lions on each side of the steps had kept guard over closed doors and shuttered windows, even then the place was pointed out to strangers for its beauty, as well as for the tragedy that had so recently made it a living tomb to its mistress. Sometimes, though not often, a glimpse might be caught of a slender, black-robed woman, and always there could be seen the one unshuttered window on the second floor. Every one knew the story of that window, and of the sunlit room beyond where lay the little woolly dog just as the baby hands had dropped it there years before; and every one knew that the black-robed woman, widow of Frank Kendall and mother of the lost little girl, was grieving her heart out in the great lonely house.
Not until the last two years of Margaret’s absence had there come a change, and then it was so gradual that the townspeople scarcely noticed it. Little by little, however, the air of gloom left the house. One by one the blinds were thrown open to the sunlight, and more and more frequently Mrs. Kendall was seen walking in the garden, or even upon the street. Not until the news of the engagement had come, however, did Houghtonsville people realize the doctor’s part in all this. Then they understood. It was he who had administered to her diseased body, and still more diseased mind; he who had roused her from her apathy of despair; and he who had taught her that the world was full of other griefs even as bitter as her own.
Not twenty-four hours after the news of the engagement became public property, old Nathan—town gossip, and driver-in-chief to a generation of physicians, Dr. Spencer included—observed triumphantly:
“And I ain’t a mite surprised, neither. It’s a good thing, too. They’re jest suited ter each other. Ain’t they been traipsin’ all over town tergether, an’ ridin’ whar ’twas too fur ter foot it?... Ter be sure, they allers went ter some one’s that was sick, an’ allers took jellies an’ things ter eat an’ read, but I had eyes, an’ I ain’t a fool. She done good, though—heaps of it; an’ ’tain’t no wonder the doctor fell head over heels in love with her.... An’ thar was the little gal, too. Didn’t he go twice ter New York a-huntin’ fur her, an’ wa’n’t it through him that they finally got her? ‘Course ’twas. ’Twas him that told Mis’ Kendall ‘bout that ’ere Mont-Lawn whar they sends them poor little city kids ter get a breath o’ fresh air; an’ ’twas him that sent on the twenty-one dollars for her, so’s she could name a bed fur little Margaret; an’ ’twas him that at last went ter New York an’ fetched her home. Gorry, ’twas allers him. Thar wa’n’t no way out of it, I say. They jest had ter get engaged!”
It was not long before the most of Houghtonsville—in sentiment, if not in words—came to old Nathan’s opinion: this prospective marriage was an ideal arrangement, after all, and not in the least surprising. There remained now only the pleasant task of making the wedding a joyful affair befitting the traditions of the town and of the honored name of Kendall.
In all Houghtonsville, perhaps, there was only one heart that did not beat in sympathy, and that one, strangely enough, belonged to Mrs. Kendall’s own daughter, Margaret.
“You mean you are goin’ to marry him, and that he’ll be your husband for—for keeps?” Margaret demanded with some agitation, when her mother told her of the engagement.
Mrs. Kendall smiled. The red mounted to her cheek.
“Yes, dear,” she said.
“And he’ll live here—with us?” Margaret’s voice was growing in horror.
“Why, yes, dear,” murmured Mrs. Kendall; then, quizzically: “Why, sweetheart, what’s the matter? Don’t you like Dr. Spencer? It was only last week that you were begging me to ask some one here to live with us.”
Margaret frowned anxiously.
“But,
