"I don't mind it. I love the dear babies, and I get interested when I am fairly started. Now, with the beautiful summers up here to look forward to, I shall mind less than ever. I should hate to think I must do it always till I became a worn-out decrepit old hack. I often wonder how I should feel to be going on without Aunt Cam, and the three or four rooms we call home. Sometimes I think that day may come, for now I don't believe I could ever go to China if occasion offered."
Mr. Williams looked startled. "Do you think it will ever come? Does she speak of going back?"
"She hints at it sometimes. Perhaps I ought not to tell even you, though I know you are not a gossip." She smiled, for anything further from a gossip than Luther Williams could not be imagined. "There is some one in China," she went on, "some one Aunt Cam met when she went over there, a man who has been, and still is, devoting his life to the people in a far-off district. He has been the one man to Aunt Cam, a hero above all others. She would willingly have joined him in his work, but he felt that it would be insupportable for a woman in the place where he believed himself to be the most needed, and so they parted, although each cared more for the other than for anyone else in the world. If he should need her at any time, if his health should fail, and he should go to a more comfortable place, leaving his work to a younger man, I think she would not hesitate to devote the rest of her life to him. She put the case before me once, and asked me if I would be willing to go with her. She feels very responsible for me, dear Aunt Cam, and I know it is mainly on my account that she stays here and does not go back."
"There are few women who love like that," said Mr. Williams, after a pause.
"There are a good many, I think," returned Gwen. "I used to believe I could be easily persuaded to go with her, but now I know I could not go, for there is some one as dear to me here as there is dear to me there. It would tear out Aunt Cam's heart to leave me behind unless it were in a home of my own, but so would it distress her to stay if she were needed there."
"Perhaps the question will never arise," said Mr. Williams, "but it ought to be provided for if it does." He spoke half to himself.
"Perhaps I could find some nice quiet people to board with," Gwen went on. "At all events I can take care of myself. I don't know why all this has come up to-day, unless it is because there was a letter from China in yesterday's mail and Aunt Cam has had a far-off look ever since. She is splendid, that dear aunt of mine, and I should feel pretty forlorn and desolate without her. I should pity myself for being an orphan if it were not for her. As it is, I suppose my lack of relatives has been a bond of sympathy between Ethel Fuller and myself, for she has no parents, either, though I don't think her aunt is half so dear as mine."
"If you could marry, you and the boy," said Mr. Williams after a silence, "it would settle it all, wouldn't it? You could have the home and the protection without the necessary parents. It would have to come some day. You would leave your parents, if you had them, for the boy." He always spoke thus of Kenneth.
"Oh yes, no doubt, for it is what girls do every day."
"That is what I mean. Well, my dear, when the time comes it is probable there will be a way provided."