"That's the outside o' the cup an' platter," she said knowingly. "I thank my stars she ain't likely to marry. She'd turn any man's house upside down inside of a week."
The parson made a deprecating noise in his throat. He seemed about to say something, and thought better of it.
"It may be," he hesitated, after a moment,—"it may be her studies take up too much of her time. I have always thought these elocution lessons"—
"Oh, my land!" cried Isabel, in passionate haste. She leaned forward as if she would implore him. "That's her only salvation. That's the makin' of her. If you stop her off there, I dunno but she'd jine a circus or take to drink! Don't you dast to do it! I'm in the family, an' I know."
The parson tried vainly to struggle out of his bewilderment.
"But," said he, "may I ask how you heard these reports? Living in Illinois, as you do—did you say Illinois or Iowa?"
"Neither," answered Isabel desperately. "'Way out on the plains. It's the last house afore you come to the Rockies. Law! you can't tell how a story gits started, nor how fast it will travel. 'T ain't like a gale o' wind; the weather bureau ain't been invented that can cal'late it. I heard of a man once that told a lie in California, an' 'fore the week was out it broke up his engagement in New Hampshire. There's the 'tater-bug—think how that travels! So with this. The news broke out in Missouri, an' here I be."
"I hope you will be able to remain."
"Only to-night," she said in haste. More and more nervous, she was losing hold on the sequence of her facts. "I'm like mortal life, here to-day an' there to-morrer. In the mornin' I sha'n't be found." ("But Isabel will," she thought, from a remorse which had come too late, "and she'll have to lie, or run away. Or cut a hole in the ice and drown herself!")
"I'm sorry to have her lose so much of your visit," began the parson courteously, but still perplexing himself over the whimsies of an old lady who flew on from the West, and made nothing of flying back. "If I could do anything towards finding her"—