A bunch of the church's best men got together and agreed that all Arthur
needed was rest; that this bright moment was the right one in which to
offer him a vacation; that his physician should flatly order him to take
it; and that Byington should arrange the matter.
Leonard accepted the task, the physician spoke with startling flatness,
and the whole kind plot worked well. Arthur consented to go away up into
the hills beyond all the jar of the busy world's unrest.
Isabel was to go with him, and they were to sojourn at some point where
she would still be within prompt reach of medical skill, yet from which
he could make long jaunts into the absolute wilds.
Mrs. Morris was far from well when they left, and the day afterward she
was seriously ill. That night Ruth sat up with her, and the next day she
was worse, yet begged that no telegram be sent to her daughter.
At the close of the day there came a letter from Isabel. It said that
Arthur, "already a new man," would start the next morning at dawn for a
three days' trip into the wilderness. He went; and he had not been three
hours gone when Isabel received a dispatch calling her to her mother.
The only day train would leave in a few minutes, and she had the fortune
to catch it.
Ruth met her at the station with the blessed word "better." They went up
from the town in Ruth's carriage, Martin Kelly driving, who let it be
known that though the doctor's name, "moy graciouz!" were signed to the
telegram seven times over, the actual painstaker and sender was "Linnard
Boyington, whatsomiver!"
Still Ruth called it the doctor's telegram, and said it made no
difference who sent it; but she saw Isabel was disturbed.
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