“Daddy dear?”
Nancy’s accent was a little wishful, as she turned her back on the habitant in the courtyard and faced her father by the dressing-table.
“Yes.” The doctor was absently rummaging among his neckties.
“Can’t you spare time to go out with me, this afternoon?”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. Lorette, or Beaumanoir, or even just up and down the city. You really have seen nothing of Quebec, daddy, and I—once in a while I get lonely.”
The doctor dropped his neckties and looked up sharply.
“Lonely, Nancy? I am sorry. Do you want to go home?”
“Oh, no!” The startled emphasis of her accent left no doubt of its truthfulness.
“Then what is it, child?”
“Nothing; only—It is just as I said. Now and then I feel a little lonesome.”
The doctor smiled at his own reflection in the mirror.
“I thought Brock and the Frenchman looked out for that, Nancy.”
“They do,” she returned desperately; “and that is just what worries me. It makes me feel as if I needed to have some family back of me.”
Gravely and steadily the doctor looked down into her troubled eyes.
“Has anything—?”
Nancy raised her head haughtily, as she answered him.
“No, daddy; trust me for that. The boys are gentlemen, and, besides, they treat me as if I were a mere cousin, or something else quite unromantic. I like them, and I like to talk with them. It is only—”
Her father understood her.
“I think you do not need to be anxious, Nancy. Over the top of my manuscripts, I keep a sharp eye out for my girl. And, besides, it is a rare advantage for you to have the friendship of the Lady. Even if I were not here, I would trust you implicitly to her care.”
Nancy nodded in slow approval.
“Yes, and she is one of us. Sometimes I am half jealous of her. M. St. Jacques is her devoted slave.”
“What about Brock?”
Nancy laughed with a carelessness which was not entirely feigned.
“Mr. Brock burns incense before every woman, young or old. He is adorable to us all, and we all adore him. Still, he never really takes us in earnest, you know.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” the doctor said, with sudden decision.
“You like Mr. Brock?” she questioned.
“Yes. Don’t you?”
“I should be an ungrateful wretch, if I didn’t.” Then she added, “Speaking of ungrateful wretches, daddy, was anything ever more strange than the whole Barth episode?”
“Haven’t you told him yet?”
“Told him! How could I? It is all I can do not to betray myself by accident; I would die rather than tell him deliberately. But I can’t see how the man can help knowing.”
“Extreme egotism coupled with extreme myopia,” the doctor suggested.
“Exactly. If it were one of us alone, I shouldn’t think so much about it; but it is a mystery to me how he can see us both, without having the truth dawn upon him.”
The doctor pondered for a moment.
“Do you know, Nancy, I believe I haven’t once come into contact with the fellow. Except for the dining-room, I’ve not even been into the same room with him. It is really wonderful how little one can see of one’s neighbors.”
Nancy faced back to the window with a jerk.
“And also how much,” she added mutinously.
But the doctor pursued his own train of thought.
“After all, Nancy, it may be our place to make the first advances. We are older—at least, I am—and there are two of us. He may be waiting for us to recognize him. I believe I’ll look him up, this evening, and tell him how we happen to be here.”
Nancy faced out again with a second jerk.
“Daddy, if you dare to do such a thing!”
“Why not? After all, I rather liked Barth.”
“I didn’t.”
“But surely you thought he was a gentleman,” the doctor urged.
“After a fashion,” Nancy admitted guardedly. “Still, now that I have met him, I’d rather let bygones be bygones. It would be maddening, for instance, just when I was sailing past him on my way in to supper, to have him remember how I used to coil strips of red flannel around his aristocratic ankle. No; we’ll let the dead past bury its bandages and water them with its liniment, daddy. If I am ever to know Mr. Cecil Barth now, it must be as a new acquaintance from London, not as my old patient from Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré.”
“And yet,” the doctor still spoke meditatively; “Barth appreciated you, Nancy, and he was certainly grateful.”
The girl laughed wilfully.
“He appreciated his hired nurse, daddy, and he was grateful to me to the extent of paying me my wages. By the way, I’d like that money.”
“For what?”
“I would drop it into the lap of the Good Sainte Anne. It is no small miracle to have delivered a British Lion into the hands of an American and allowed her to minister to his wounded paw. It was a great experience, daddy, and, now I think of it, I would like to reward the saint according to her merits.”
The doctor’s eyes brightened, as he looked at her merry face.
“Wait,” he advised her. “Even now, the miracle may not be complete.”
She ran after him and caught him by the lapels of his collar.
“Oh, don’t talk in riddles,” she protested. “And, anyway, promise me you won’t tell any tales to Mr. Barth.”
“My dear child, I have something to do, besides forcing my acquaintance upon stray young Englishmen who don’t care for it.”
She kissed him impetuously.
“Spoken like your daughter’s own father!” she said approvingly. “Now, if you really won’t go out to play with me, I’m going to the library to read the new magazines.”
An hour later, Nancy was sitting by a window, Harper’s in her lap and her eyes fixed on the dark blue Laurentides to the northward. The girl spent many a leisure hour in the grim old building, once a prison, but now the home of a little library whose walls breathed a mingled atmosphere of mustiness and learning. Ancient folios were not lacking; but Kipling was on the upper shelves and one of the tables was littered with rows of the latest magazines.
To-day, however, Nancy’s mind was not upon her story, nor yet upon the Laurentides beneath her thoughtful gaze. The episode of the previous night had left a strong impression upon her. It was the first time she had seen the three men together; she had watched them with shrewd, impartial eyes. Britisher, Canadian, and Frenchman, Catholic and Protestant: three more distinct types could scarcely have been gathered into the narrow limits of an impromptu theatre party. Beyond the simple attributes of manliness and breeding, they possessed scarcely a trait in common. In two of them, Nancy saw little to deplore; in all three, she saw a good deal to like.
Barth she dismissed with a brief shake of her head. He was undeniably plucky, far more plucky than at first she had supposed. To her energetic, healthy mind, there had been nothing so very bad about a sprained ankle. A little pain, a short captivity, and that was the end of it. Once or twice it had seemed to her that Barth had been needlessly depressed by the situation, needlessly unresponsive to her efforts to arouse him. It was only during the past few days that she had seen what it really meant: the physical pain and weariness to be borne as best it might, in a strange city and cut off from any friendly companionship. It even occurred dimly to her mind that Barth was not wholly responsible for his chilly inability to make new friends, that it was just possible he regretted the fact as keenly as any one else. Moreover, Nancy was just. She admitted, as she looked back over those ten days at Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré, that Barth had been singularly free from fault-finding and complaint. She also............