“I couldn’t do anything else, Jeff,” she sobbed. “I had to say yes to him for dad’s sake—and mother’s.”
“Of course you did, darling; don’t think about it. Oh, Maida, look! The wind has torn up the sycamore! Unrooted it, and it has fallen over——”
“Over into Massachusetts!” Maida cried; “Jeffrey, think what that means!”
“Why—why!——” Allen was speechless.
“Yes; the sycamore has gone into Massachusetts—and father can go!”
“Is that real, Maida—is it truly a permission?”
“Of course it is! We’ve got Governor Appleby’s letter, saying so—written when he was governor, you know! Jeffrey—I’m so happy! It makes me forget that awful——”
“Do forget it all you can, dearest,” and beneath her lover’s caresses, Maida did forget, for the moment at least.
“It’s the only inexplicable thing about it all, Fibs,” Fleming Stone observed, after the case was among the annals of the past, “that the old sycamore fell over and fell the right way.”
“Mighty curious, F. Stone,” rejoined the boy, with an expressionless face.