Robust and pleasant, with a practical eye
on her promising future, she had arrived, the fulfilment
of despair. Dr Drummond looked at her with acquiescence,
half-cowed, half-comic, wondering at his own folly in
dreaming of anything else. Miss Cameron brought the
situation, as it were, with her; it had to be faced, and
Dr Drummond faced it like a philosopher. She was the
material necessity, the fact in the case, the substantiation
of her own legend; and Dr Drummond promptly gave her all
the consideration she demanded in this aspect. Already
he heard himself pronouncing a blessing over the pair--and
they would make the best of it. With characteristic
dispatch he decided that the marriage should take place
the first Monday after Finlay's return. That would give
them time to take a day or two in Toronto, perhaps, and
get back for Finlay's Wednesday prayer meeting. "Or I
could take it off his hands," said Dr Drummond to himself.
"That would free them till the end of the week." Solicitude
increased in him that the best should be made of it;
after all, for a long time they had been making the worst.
Mrs Forsyth, whom it had been necessary to inform when
Mrs Kilbannon and Miss Cameron became actually imminent,
saw plainly that the future Mrs Finlay had made a very
good impression on the Doctor; and as nature, in Mrs
Forsyth's case, was more powerful than grace, she became
critical accordingly.
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