“Blue Earth told me yesterday that she’s going to be married again—to Moses Blackstone. _She_ won’t need me any more,” half laughed, half sobbed the girl, recalling the dumb pleading that had so irritated her in those eyes of Moses’. She was all woman—our little Stella, and the personal note would not be denied. “It can’t be just yet, of course; I must take a month or two to wind up everything; but—yes—I’ll come!”
They had turned their backs upon the tiny, primitive village, and were facing the eastern horizon, remote and lovely in the transforming after-glow.
“And you graduate from the medical college when, Ethan? Isn’t it next year? Are you really going to settle down in Laurel?”
“Doctor Brown is anxious to divide his practice, but I haven’t given him my answer yet,” responded Ethan, his serious eyes upon the soft, averted cheek that had at last begun to burn with a delicate consciousness.
“You see, Stella, the _place_ doesn’t matter much,” he went on, with tender confidence. “Any place holds duties to fill a lifetime; it’s the _spirit_ that really counts. A doctor’s heart ought to be as large as all humanity, don’t you think so? I may go east; I may go west. I only know one thing surely … I must follow my Star!”
“I allers sort o’ mistrusted that Injuns was folks.” This was Grandma Brown’s comment, when she heard that Stella had been sent for at last. “Seems like there’s a sight of human nater in most all of us,—even in that Sophi’ Spellman!”
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Yellow Star: A Story of East and West, by Elaine Goodale Eastman