In July the little doctor found his patient strong enough for crutches and dismissed the nurse. And unexpectedly John Whitaker arrived, growling his opinion of the rural trains.
"Can you walk without your crutches?" he barked, his glasses oddly moist.
"You don't deserve a job," he grumbled, "turning me down for a dynamite spree, but I'm going to send you to Ireland in the fall. There's a story there--a big one. If," he added grimly, "you can manage to get in."
Late August found the tension of worry at an end. Brian at last was walking. And Don had fought a battle with his books and won.
"Come," Kenny begged one night when the dusk lay thick in the valley. "Let's pace the Gray Man, Joan, in Garry's car. Nobody needs you now as much as I."
"Kenny, Kenny, Kenny," she said, "will you ever grow up?"
"Did Peter Pan? Better get your cloak, dear. You may need it."
He went off whistling to the barn. Kenny had blessed the car and Garry many times. He blessed them again as the engine throbbed in the dusk. Hot silence lay upon the ridge, broken only by the noise of insects.
"A long road and a straight road and Samhain at the end!" he sang as Joan climbed in. "And bless the Irish heart of me, dear, there's a moon scrambling up behind the hill and peeping over. Lordy, Lordy!" he added under his breath, "what a moon!"
"'On such a night Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew And with an unthrift love did run to Venice As far as--'
"Hum! I've forgotten. Wonder why Shakespeare looked ahead and harpooned me with that word unthrift. Where to, Jessica? Where shall the unthrift lover drive on such a night?"
"I mind me," he said instantly, "of an Irish tale of Finn McCoul."
"Tell me," she said at last. "Finn and you are always delightful."
"That's just the sort of polite nothing you learned in New York!"
"I'm sorry, Kenny. I'm--tired. And just for a minute I wasn't listening. You know how it is. You hear an echo in your mind a long while after and answer in a panic." She brushed her cheek against his sleeve with a remorseful gesture of appeal. His arm went round her.
"There!" he said with a sigh of relief. "That's better. I'm lonesome when we're not in tune."
Kenny told of a fairy face that Finn had seen in a lake among the heather.