The Englishman began to hum it in a rich tenor.

“That’s it, you bet,” she cried delightedly.  “Just think of you coming all the way across the ocean and knowing that just the same as we do.  I used to listen at the keyhole when Mrs. Francis had company, and I was there helping Camilla.  Dr. Clay sang that lots of times.”

The Englishman had not sung since he had left his father’s house.  He began to sing now, in a sweet, full voice, resonant on the quiet evening air, the cows staring idly at him.  The old dog came down to the bars with his bristles up, expecting trouble.

Old Sam and his son Tom coming in from work stopped to listen to these strange sounds.

“Confound them English!” old Sam said.  “Ye’d think I was payin’ him to do that, and it harvest-time, too!”

When Dr. Clay, with Danny Watson gravely perched beside him, drove along the river road after saying good-bye to Pearl, they met Miss Barner, who had been digging ferns for Mrs. McGuire down on the river flat.

The doctor drew in his horse.

“Miss Barner,” he said, lifting his hat, “if Daniel Mulcahey Watson and I should ask you to come for a drive with us, I wonder what you would say?”

Miss Barner considered for a moment and then said, smiling: 

“I think I would say, ’Thank you very much, Mr. Watson and Dr. Clay, I shall be delighted to come if you have room for me.’”

Life had been easier for Mary Barner since Dr. Clay had come to Millford.  It was no longer necessary for her to compel her father to go when he was sent for, and when patients came to the office, if she thought her father did not know what he was doing, she got Dr. Clay to check over the prescriptions.

It had been rather hard for Mary to ask him to do this, for she had a fair share of her father’s Scotch pride; but she had done too many hard things in her life to hesitate now.  The young doctor was genuinely glad to serve her, and he made her feel that she was conferring, instead of asking, a favour.

They drove along the high bank that fell perpendicularly to the river below and looked down at the harvest scene that lay beneath them.  The air was full of the perfume of many flowers and the chatter of birds.

The Reverend Hugh Grantley drove swiftly by them, whereupon Danny made his presence known for the first time by the apparently irrelevant remark: 

“I know who Miss Barner’s fellow is! so I do.”

Now if Dr. Clay had given Danny even slight encouragement, he would have pursued the subject, and that might have saved complications in the days to come.

CHAPTER XII FROM CAMILLA’S DIARY