"Then is she there still?" asked Edna, as Miss Lacey paused for a hasty selection of further detail.
"Yes, indeed. We shouldn't think of allowing her to leave, and," very confidentially, "I don't know whether you ever heard of the romance of Thinkright's life?"
Edna shook her head. Miss Martha nodded hers impressively. "Yes. Sylvia's mother. Mh'm. There's something quite touching about this outcome. He seems to consider that he has almost adopted Sylvia,—that she belongs to him."
Edna gave a little exclamation. "Any girl would be fortunate to belong to Thinkright," she returned.
"Yes, indeed. He's a good man, and the judge and I feel perfectly easy"—Miss Martha used that form of speech with subtle satisfaction—"to leave her with him. Of course we're three lone, lorn people, and Thinkright's less closely related to the child than we; but neither the judge nor I would feel it right"—here conscience reared until it threatened to stop her speech altogether. "Will you wait till your advice is asked?" she demanded in fierce, silent parenthesis. Then with a vigorous swallow she finished her sentence,—"feel it right to take her away from him."
Miss Martha leaned back in her chair flushed and guiltily content. She had made her impression, and she was willing to pay for it with vigils if necessary.
"The girl certainly couldn't be in a better place for either mind or body," returned Edna thoughtfully, looking out the window; "but I wonder, since you tell me this, why the evening I was there she was so insistent about going away."
Miss Martha recalled vaguely a quotation concerning the swiftness with which a start in deceit becomes a tangled web.
"You see, she wasn't real well," she returned, "and I suppose she had fancies; but I'm expecting to find her settled and happy by this time. She certainly would be excusable if she was a little notional and restless at first." Then with one deep breath she changed the subject. "I wonder, Edna, if we're going to need a new cook stove this summer?"
Miss Derwent rose to the fascinating bait. She considered it enchanting to live in a house where she could be acquainted with the cook stove; and Miss Martha felt that she had sheered off the thin ice upon solid ground at last.