Page:Good Sports (1919).djvu/176

Rh but Mr. Guthrie tells her she is, and when he's around she really does show control. He comes and helps us three times a day, at one and five and ten, at the end of each of the three periods when she has the weights put on. It tuckers him all out, though. He's all perspiration sometimes, after Miss DeForrest has hung on to his hands instead of crying out. It's just wonderful the effect he has on her."

It was wonderful. I had always thought of Burr in a sort of elder-sisterly way. He had seemed like a little boy to me, ever since he actually was one—a little boy who needed a good deal of encouraging and urging forward himself. But after that afternoon when I listened to him with Elsie, I felt apologetic for my Pharisaism. He went down into the valley with Elsie. As he urged forward the poor little stumbling, half-winded creature, his soul entered into hers; her suffering became his. I never let my brother know that I was present during one of those ordeals of his. I never went to the DeForrests' at that time again. In fact, there was little opportunity for another visit. Elsie left our town a fortnight later.

About a week before Burr's vacation was over, he came to the house for dinner. "I'm going to be married to-morrow," he announced briefly to