This time Joanne heard: “But, Gregory, I don’t see how I can allow her to be separated from me an entire month.”
“Nonsense!” again Dr. Selden spoke. “You may as well get used to it. Suppose she marries some day and goes to the uttermost parts of the earth.”
Joanne started back, suddenly realizing that she was eavesdropping. What right had she to listen to a conversation not intended for her ears? The color flamed up into her face, and she clapped her hands over her offending members. “How mean of me! How mean!” she whispered as she ran back to her room. “I wouldn’t have believed I could be so contemptible. Poor, dear Gradda; how anxious she is about me. I am an ungrateful wretch.”
She scrambled into bed, and, warm June night though it was, drew the sheet over her head as if to shut out the conversation taking place below. She could not shut out, however, the memory of what she had heard. Suppose anything were to happen to those two; the thought had never occurred to her before; she had taken them as a matter of course. Terror seized her. She jumped up, hurried into her slippers and wrapper and flew down-stairs.
Her grandmother looked up to see her standing in the doorway pale with emotion. “Why, Joanne, my child, what is the matter?” she asked. “Are you ill?”
“No,” quavered Joanne, not having control of herself to say more.
“Then what has frightened you?”
“I love you both so much and I don’t want any—anything to happen to—to happen to you.” She rushed to her grandmother and flung her arms around the puzzled lady’s neck, then she burst into a torrent of tears.
“There, there,” said Mrs. Selden soothingly. “Of course we know you love us. She must have had a bad dream,” she said to her husband.
He nodded assent. “We’re all right, Joanne,” he said soothingly. “The bears won’t get us this time,” he added as if to a small child.