CHAPTER XLIV.

A SHORT DRIVE.

THEY walked down the hill together, Otto looking out for a cab, but saying very little.

"At last I can talk to you!" he exclaimed when they were seated. "Gertrude! I have accepted Dr. Blank's offer, and I am to go abroad for a year with his patient!"

"It will do you good, Otto—you have been overworking for a long time."

"I could not help that—it was so important for me to make the most of my time. But, Gertrude, he holds out a hope for my future which has made all the difference to me. But the greatest difficulty is, you said you did not care to live in London—?"

"But that makes no difference to your plans, Otto, unless you meant that you wanted mother to come—"

"I don't want mother! I want you. Of course it makes all the difference in the world. You know that well enough."

Gertrude was silent. How could she answer such words?

"What is the plan?" she asked, after a pause.

"Dr. Blank thinks he will have work for me to help him with, while I complete my medical studies. I told him—Gertrude, I told him that there was a certain dear girl whom I loved with all my heart, and that my great object was to make a home for her. He bid me work and hope."

"That is always best," said Gertrude, with a little smile.

"Do you bid me work and hope?"

"Certainly I do, Otto. Have I not always?"

"Then at the end of the year (for he pays me well, Gertrude), if I can find a house, can you bear to come right into the heart of London and make a very small beginning with me?"

"I never guessed you wanted that!" she said, turning her eyes towards his face. "Otto, do you really mean what you have said?"

"I have meant it for years! At first I thought I must not, and put it away. But lately I found that it was a great blessing and a great gift, one I could not dismiss unless I ought. There is no ought about it, is there? Gertrude, you knew all this long ago!"

Whether she had guessed it or not, it was very different to hear him saying it all. But the cab was nearing her sister's hotel, and there was one thing she did want to tell him, if she could say nothing else.

"You must not think—oh, Otto, never think for one moment that living in London would be any trial to me if—"

"Go on, Gertrude—if what?"

"If you wanted me to."

"Ah! Do I not? But you knew that, when you said what you did the other day."

Gertrude shook her head.

"It was what you said then that made me dare to accept Dr. Blank's offer."

The cab had almost reached the hotel. In a moment it drew up abruptly.

Otto sprang out; he handed her from their humble conveyance, and led her straight up to her sister's room.

Gertrude felt once more as if all were a dream, all but Otto's hand, which did not let hers go till he had brought her right into her sister's presence, announcing, in a voice that was full of joy—

"Rose! I've brought her. And though we have not had time to say a quarter of the things we would, yet she has promised to be my wife, and come and make me happy when I come home next year!"

Of course Rose looked very glad too. And for a few minutes, Gertrude could do nothing but bend over little Lester, hiding her hot cheeks against his curls, while Otto and Rose and Fritz exchanged congratulations.

Then Rose came over to where she sat, and knelt down by her and Lester.

"How does he look?" she asked yearningly, laying her hand on her child's.

Gertrude was gazing in his little face.

"I think he looks decidedly less frail than two days ago. Not so pinched and weary."

"That is what 'I' said!" exclaimed Rose joyfully. "Fritz was afraid it was my fancy."

The child lay on the sofa with a light shawl thrown over him, his eyes open and turning to watch them as they moved about, but without any recognition in them.

"When he knows me," said Rose softly, "I shall begin to hope—really."

"Ah! You hope now, little mother," said Fritz tenderly. "Hope? Why if I had as much faith in some things as you have in Lester's knowing you by and by, I should be on the high-road to being all you want me to be!"

He spoke lightly, covering an earnest thought beneath his jest.

"I have faith in both," said Rose, looking up, "or rather, I have faith in God about you both."

They all knew that she spoke truly. But what seemed such a very simple matter to some people was an insurmountable difficulty to Fritz.

"I can't make myself a Christian," he thought. And forgot that Rose had often responded,—

"No, dear Fritz, but He says, 'Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out.' You have not tried to come yet."

[Illustration]

[Illustration]