“Thank you for the kind thought. It has been an anxious time, but she is out of danger, and I am able to face my duties again. Will you tell me what you have been doing since I saw you?”
Lisa’s eyes were downcast. “I have not been so very frivolous,” she said, with a little smile. “I have been studying and working.” And she told him of her interest in the kindergarten, of her guild, of certain hopes in herself, while he listened gravely.
“I don’t know why I am boring you with this exhaustive account of my doings and my wonderings and my wishings,” she said, suddenly, with a realizing sense of having unfolded her heart more fully than she had meant to do.
“You are telling me because you know I understand, and because I am interested in hearing about you all. Even if I do not see you all very often, I do not feel myself a stranger in your father’s household, and each one of you has a claim upon my friendship.”
Lisa did not reply, but she was vaguely conscious of a dissatisfaction at such generalizing.
They were interrupted by a “Where are you?” from Persis. “We must go, Lisa. Isn’t this moonlight lovely? The wagonette is waiting at the door, and Mrs. Dixon says we must be off. Isn’t she a nice jolly chaperon, and haven’t we had a good time?”
Mr. Danforth looked at Persis as if suddenly realizing a new fact. “You are not a little girl any more, are you, Miss Persis?” he said.
“No,” she replied; “not such a very little one, but I am not a full-fledged young lady like Lisa. I am still only a school-girl.”
But to Lisa’s discomfiture it was this younger sister to whom Mr. Danforth devoted himself on the drive home, which was enlivened by college songs and the gay humor of young people full of life and care-free.
