The Mountain Girl - 09 - Emma Payne Erskine - Web Novel

IN WHICH DAVID ACCOMPANIES CASSANDRA ON AN ERRAND OF MERCY

Filled with the enthusiasm of his thoughts, David climbed too rapidly, and now he found he must take the more gradual rise of the mule trail without haste. His cap thrust in his pocket, the breeze lifted his hair and dried the perspiration which would still come with any too eager exertion. But why should he care? Even to be alive these days was joy. This was continually the refrain of his heart, nor had he begun to exhaust his resources for entertainment in his solitary life.

Never were the days too long. Each was filled with such new and lively interest as to preclude the thought of ennui. To provide against it, he had sent for books—more than he had had time to read in all the busy days of the last three years. These and his microscope and his surgical instruments had been brought him on a mule team by Jerry Carew, who did his "toting" for him, fetching all he needed for work or comfort, in this way, from the nearest station where goods could be sent until the hotel opened in the early summer. Not that he needed them, but that, as an artist loves to keep a supply of paints and canvas, or a writer—even when idle—is happier to know that he has at hand plenty of pens and blank paper, he liked to have them.

Thus far he had felt no more need of his books than he had for his surgical instruments, but now he was glad he