"What am I doing?" he asked.
"Making love to the piano."
"It does not hurt the piano, does it?"
"No; but never say you do not feel when you play like that."
"Is not that rather peremptory? Who taught you to read characters?"
"You."
"I? What a poor teacher I was to allow you to show such bungling work!
Will you sing?"
"No, I shall read; I have had quite enough of myself and of you for one night."
"Alas, poor me!" he retorted mockingly, and seeming to accompany his words with his music; "I am sorry for you, my child, that your emotions are so troublesome. You have but made your entrance into the coldest, most exciting arena, --the world. Remember what I tell you, --all the strong motives, love and hate and jealousy, are mere flotsam and jetsam. You are the only loser by their possession."
The quiet closing of the door was his only answer. Ruth had left the room.
She knew Arnold too well to be affected by his little splurt of cynicism.
If she could escape a cynic either in books or in society, she invariably did so. Life was still beautiful for her; and one of her father's untaught lessons was that the cynic is a one-sided creature, having lost the eye that sees the compensation balancing all things. As long as Louis attacked things, it did no harm, except to incite a friendly passage-at-arms; hence, most of such talk passed in the speaking. Not so the disparaging insinuations he had cast at Dr. Kemp.
During the week in which Ruth had established herself as nurse-in-chief to her mother she had seen him almost daily. Time in a quiet sick-room passes monotonously; events that are unnoticed in hours of well-being and activity here assume proportions of importance; meal-times are looked forward to as a break in the day; the doctor's visit especially when it is the only one allowed, is an excitement. Dr. Kemp's visits were short, but the two learned to look for his coming and the sound of his deep, cheery voice, as to their morning's tonic that would strengthen the whole day. Naturally, as he was a stranger, Mrs. Levice in her idleness had analyzed and discussed aloud his qualities, both personal and professional, to her satisfaction. She had small ground for basing her judgments, but the doctor formed a good part of her conversation.
Ruth's knowledge of him was somewhat larger, --about the distance between Mrs. Levice's bedroom and the front door. She had a homely little way of seeing people to the door, and here it was the doctor gave her any new instructions. Instructions are soon given and taken; and there was always time for a word or two of a different nature.
In the first place, she had been attracted by his horses, a magnificent pair of jetty blacks.
"I wonder if they would despise a lump of sugar," she said one morning.
"Why should they?" asked Kemp.
"Oh, they seem to hold their heads so haughtily."
"Still, they are human enough to know sweets when they see them," their owner replied, taking in the beautiful figure of the young girl in her quaint, flowered morning-gown. "Try them once, and you won't doubt it."
She did try them; and as she turned a slightly flushed face to Kemp, who stood beside her, he held out his hand, saying almost boyishly, "Let me thank you and shake hands for my horses."
One can become eloquent, witty, or tender over the weather. The doctor became neither of these; but Ruth, whose spirits were mercurially affected by the atmosphere, always viewed the elements with the eye of a private signal-service reporter.
"This is the time for a tramp," she said, as they stood on the veranda, and the summer air, laden with the perfume of heliotrope, stole around them.
"That is where the laboring man has the advantage over you, Dr. Kemp."
"Which, ten to one, he finds a disadvantage. I must confess that in such weather every healthy individual with time at his disposal should be inhaling this air at a leisurely trot or stride as his habit may be. You, Miss Levice, should get on your walking togs instantly."
"Yes, but not conveniently. My father and I never failed to take our morning constitutional together when all was well. Father always gave me the dubious compliment of saying I walked as straight and took as long strides as a boy. Being a great lover of the exercise, I was sorry my pas was not ladylike."
"You doubtless make a capital companion, as your father evidently remembered what a troublesome thing it is to conform one's length of limb to the dainty footsteps of a woman."
"Father has no trouble on that score," said Ruth, laughing.
The doctor smiled in response, and raising his hat, said, "That is where he has the advantage over a tall man."
