"Oh, to please me," urged Mrs. Porter. "I never bring a pillow. This sun-warmed rock just fits my back. We haven't tried it on yours yet, and I wanted your first experience to be positively sybaritic."
"My first," returned Linda; "then you do intend to let me come again?"
"Indeed, I do," was the cheery reply. "I don't know a better object lesson in the fact that nothing is too good to be true."
CHAPTER XVI
THE VOICE OF TRUTH
"And I," returned Linda, clasping her hands behind her head as she leaned back beside her friend, "I have felt that nothing was too bad to be true."
Mrs. Porter did not speak; and after a short silence, the girl continued:—
"In the happy days, I tore off a leaf from your Bible calendar, and one morning, when everything was black and despairing, I found it in my bag. It read, 'Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree.' I suppose I was like the drowning man, and this promise, impersonal and silent, was a straw to be clung to blindly. At any rate, I couldn't throw it away; and it persisted in ringing through my confused head. Soon your letter came. Oh, Mrs. Porter—" Linda choked and ceased.
Her companion laid a comforting hand upon her for a moment and withdrew it.