One way and another Jessie heard of Jack often; but naturally she was very busy at home, and after what had passed, she was sensible enough to know that it would not do for her to be perpetually running down to the Groates' Store with inquiries after him. Jessie had a due amount of self-respect, and she felt that she had to act with circumspection and with girlish reserve. She had thus far escaped an encounter with Miss Sophia Coxen. No whisper of gossip about herself and Jack had as yet reached her ears. It might be that for once Miss Sophia Coxen was restraining her love of talk. Jessie earnestly hoped that this was the case. But between Millie, Hero, and Miss Perkins, she found small leisure at this date.
"Folks 'll begin to think soon about coming to the sea," Miss Perkins one day remarked tentatively to Jessie. She had not made up her own mind what steps to take next, and a talk might clear the air of difficulties. In her present mood, if Jessie took one side of a question, Miss Perkins would instantly take the other side, out of sheer perversity. "And I shall be wanting my spare room."
"But—Millie!" Jessie exclaimed. Mildred's surname was now, of course, known, and people were trying to get into the way of calling her "Miss Pattison," after for two or three weeks thinking of her only as "Mildred." Jessie and her aunt had, at Mildred's particular request, kept to the Christian name, and Jessie had soon adopted the shortened form.
Miss Perkins' answer came with a snap. "Well, I s'pose she'll have to go. She'll be fit to travel soon, I s'pose."
"I don't believe she's got anywhere to go to."
Jessie's opposition was as good as a sign-post to Miss Perkins, who immediately took the reverse road to that indicated.
"She'll have to find somewhere, then. Anyhow, she isn't going to stop here. Don't you be a goose, Jessie. She's got letters this very morning. Of course she knows people. And she don't belong to us; and I'm not going to keep her, neither. It's little enough I've got to live on—and you to keep as well as myself."
Jessie was for the moment silenced. She did not believe that Mildred had any idea of moving at present; yet it could hardly be expected that Miss Perkins should undertake the support of this stranger, as she had undertaken the support of her own niece.
Miss Perkins had a nice little life-annuity of her own, the fruit of her father's careful savings in past days; and so long as she lived, Miss Perkins and her niece were secured from destitution. But the annuity was scarcely enough to keep them in comfort without the help of occasional lodgers; and since it would die with Miss Perkins, any small sum that could be saved she might naturally wish to lay by for Jessie's future. A third person could hardly subsist upon the annuity, and then, Hero's appetite was not small.
Curiously, though not so curiously as might seem at first sight, Mildred herself opened the subject less than two hours later. It was not so curious because the cause which had led to Miss Perkins' utterances was the same which led to her own. Millie had received two letters by that morning's post, and Miss Perkins was aware of the fact.