"And all of us heart-broken but T.O.—girls, where's T.O.?"
She was not there. The train was getting under way. In a flurry they huddled to the windows.
"Good-by! Good-by!" shouted a gay voice from the platform. A little white envelope flew in at one of the open windows. T.O., quite calm and unexcited, stood out there waving to them.
"What in the world!" ejaculated Laura Ann, then stopped. For she alone could see a little ray of light. "Read the letter," she said more quietly. "The letter will tell us."
They all read it together, their heads bunched closely.
"Dear girls, I'm going to stay. I never was needed before, but I guess I am now. And maybe you'll think it's funny, but I'm wanted! An imaginary daughter can't wait on a poor little cripple—it takes the flesh-and-blood kind. I found out she wanted me, and so I'm going to stay. It would have been lonesome, anyway, all alone in the Hive! I bequeath all my rights to you—"
"As if she had any now, any more than the rest of us!" muttered Billy fiercely, her eyes full of tears.
"Sometimes when you're going and coming, some o' you listen to the car-wires sing, for me, and the wheels rattle," the letter went on. "Bump into somebody sometime for me! Good-by. You're all of you dears.
"Amelia."
At the signature they choked a little, and looked away at the flying landscape without seeing it at all. Laura Ann saw another picture—a girl waiting at a little gate. Woods and dusty road and humble little homes for background, and an old stage rattling into view in the foreground. She saw it stop—in the picture—and a helpless little old figure be taken out. She saw the girl at the gate spring forward and hold out her hands. But the heart of the picture was the face of the little old woman on crutches. It was another picture for the Grand Gallery.