"Not exactly. He is so tiresome about some things."
"What special thing?"
"Oh, just a soft, silly thing."
"Well, I think you ought to write. He is mightily discouraged. He is ill and wretched, poor boy."
Jack leaned forward, her eyes fixed on the letter which Mary Lee did not offer her. "It isn't—it isn't—his old trouble, is it?" she questioned, a note of anxiety in her voice.
"No, I don't think so, but he seems tired and heart-sick, somehow as if the world were all awry. I never had such a doleful letter from him, and Nan's is about like it. It isn't Carter's way at all to be bitter and talk of giving up and going to the uttermost parts of the earth."
"Very likely he doesn't mean it," said Jack regaining her hard manner.
"We might think so if Mrs. Roberts hadn't written to Aunt Helen that Carter was looking wretchedly and that he had overworked and they were urging him to go abroad, and to spend next winter in Egypt."
Jack made no reply but left the room and a moment later was at her Aunt Helen's door. "May I see Mrs. Roberts' letter, Aunt Helen?" she asked. "Mary Lee said you had heard from her."
"Why, yes," was the answer, "you can see it, of course."