"With Aunt Emmeline." And then she poured forth into sympathetic ears a recital of her woes, inflicted largely by her aunt.
"What are you going to do?" asked Joel, when she finished. "Are you going back?"
"No, I am not. That settles it!"
"Never?"
"No, never!"
Joel was amused. He well knew that the angry girl would be obliged, sooner or later, to modify her emphatic and hasty assertions. However, he thought it best to make no criticism, at least until she should see her folly and mistake herself; so he only said:
"Well, I guess you had better come with me just now. Both of us will catch cold if we stay here much longer."
Unquestioningly, Lottie arose. She did not care where she went, so long as she was with Joel, who now was all she had to cling to.
The sight of poor, deformed Joel, hobbling painfully along, touched Lottie's heart as nothing else could have done, as she contrasted his shrunken body with her own strong, robust self. She felt almost glad her mother could not see him now—she had been so proud of Joel's strength.
At length they halted before a small house that appeared strangely familiar to Lottie, and Joel rapped on the door. What was her surprise and delight to see the door opened by Flora Hazeley.