Martin bent and touched his lips to Doris’s head which was bowed before him.

“Thank you,” he said with infinite tenderness; “you are permitting me to share all that you have, my dear.  Good-night.”

CHAPTER VII

“To do our best is one part, but to wash our hands smilingly of the consequences is the next part, of any sensible virtue.”

In much that frame of mind, Doris arose the day following Martin’s call.

By some subtle force the debris of the past seemed to have been disposed of; the misunderstanding on her part and David’s.

“It is the ‘call’ that makes everything possible or tragically wretched,” she said, “and one cannot be blamed for being born deficient.  Thank God I fitted in, though, when others were called away.”

With David’s understanding and cooeperation the present could be confronted and the “hand washing of consequences” undertaken.

“I have done my best,” Doris felt sure of this, “my best, and now I must do a bit of trusting.  It has been my one daring adventure.  It must not fail.”

After many attempts she wrote and dispatched a letter to George Thornton, simply stating that she was about to send the children to school.

While waiting for his reply she turned her attention to Mary, for in any case, she decided, the children must be placed in another’s care.  What Mary felt when Doris explained things to her no one was ever likely to know.  The girl’s face became blanker; the lines stiffened.

“It was,” Doris confided later to Martin, “as if I were wiping the past out as I spoke.”

The fact was that Doris was rekindling the past—­the past that lay back of the years of plain duty.

“I have not overlooked, Mary,” Doris strove to get under the crust of reserve and find something with which to deal emotionally, “the years of devotion to us all.  You have made no social ties for yourself; have not taken any pleasures outside—­what would you like to do now, Mary?”

“Go home.”

“Go—­home?  Why—­where is home, Mary?”

The pathos struck Doris—­the pathos of those who, having served others, find themselves stranded at last.

“Down to Silver Gap.”  As she spoke, Mary was hearing already the sound of the river on the rocks and seeing the spring flowers in the crevices of the hills.

“You mean, go back to Ridge House?  You could not stay there alone, Mary, with old Jed.”

Mary stared blankly—­she was further back than Ridge House.

“I’ve been saving,” she went slowly on, “all the years.  I reckon I have most enough to buy the cabin where us-all was born.”  The tone and words took on the mountain touch.  Doris was fascinated.

“You mean your father’s old cabin?” she asked.

“Yes.  It lies ’cross the river from Ridge House, and when I think of it,” a suggestion of radiance broke on Mary’s face, “I get a rising in my side.  I’m aiming to get it back——­”