The sisters stared each at the other, aghast. "Aunt Barbara will want me. I've got to go home now."
Good-byes were brief, and Jessie was speedily hastening homeward. But she did not at once report herself to Miss Perkins, or go to Mildred. She ran upstairs to her own little room, shut the door, and stood still to think.
"How they do meddle, and how I do hate meddling! Was I wrong to say that? But what else could I say? And now they will go and repeat what I have said all over the place. And Jack will hear it too. Well, let him! If he really cares for me, he ought to understand; and if he doesn't, it's the best thing he can hear. Will he mind? Poor Jack! O I wish, I wish, people wouldn't interfere in what doesn't concern them. What does it signify to Miss Sophy whether I like Jack or don't like him? It's our business, not hers.
"Aunt Barbara declared it was no business of Jack's to go and save the sailors, and I think that was his business. It was everybody's business. But I'm sure this isn't everybody's business. I do detest the way Miss Sophy goes on. And if Jack hears what I said! I wish I hadn't said so much! And yet if I hadn't, Miss Sophy would have gone talking everywhere, as if I wanted to marry Jack. And I don't—unless he wants it! Of course I don't. But if Jack hears, what will he think?"
Jessie's fears were not without foundation. So interesting a conversation could not possibly be kept by the sisters for their own private delectation, and it was whispered in detail to one acquaintance after another, always under injunctions to secrecy.
Such injunctions are not worth much, since each acquaintance was pretty sure to repeat the whisper to somebody else. In this manner the tale travelled in a very short time, not exactly across the road, but round by longer routes, till it arrived inside Groates' store. Had Jack's mother heard it, she would never have said a word to Jack; but unhappily Mimy was the recipient, and Mimy always told everything to Jack. She never thought of making this an exception. Jack listened with grieved eyes.
"Jessie said she wouldn't have me! Mimy, are you sure it isn't a mistake? What could have made her speak so? I've never told her yet in plain words that I do want her; but she must have seen. I thought she understood, and I thought she cared for me. I did really think it."
"I'm sure I did too, Jack. Jessie must be a heartless sort of girl to talk in such a way—just now when you are ill, too."
"We don't know what made her talk so. You're quite sure she really did say it?"
"Miss Sophy is telling everybody that she did. I don't see why Miss Sophy should make up such a story for nothing. And Jessie hasn't been here nearly so often the last few weeks, Jack. Mother and I could not think why. Perhaps she has changed somehow."