"Certainly," replied Edna with conviction, and the judge allowed his plate to be replenished. "You shall go out after supper to see my alterations," went on Edna. "Willis is going to let the other man come to-morrrow to finish up, for he told me he 'couldn't put off no longer goin' to Portland to have a tooth hauled.'"
The girl continued to keep the conversation in safe channels until the trying hour was over, then, asking Miss Martha to take the men around the house to exhibit her improvements, she ran upstairs again to Sylvia's room. Shutting herself in, she stood considering in what form she should put the news to those below. The gulf between herself and her guest still yawned; and, while she regretted to have hurt her, she felt that her words had not been unwarranted.
It was hard to forgive Sylvia for being so different from any girl of her own world, and yet to have strongly attracted so fastidious a man as John Dunham.
Edna caught herself up sharply. Was it possible that the least shadow of jealousy had influenced her treatment of Sylvia? She was given to uncompromising self-examination, and she knew that it had been a surprise to her to discover in the past days that she was not John's chief interest. She accused herself now of a snobbish inclination toward Sylvia, entirely aside from the perplexity and disapproval the girl had caused her. Edna knew herself to be accustomed to a pedestal. She feared that she had come to taking it for granted that even among her peers she should be preëminent, and that, as for this Western protégée whom she had patronized for Thinkright's sake, it had been a surprise to find her considered, socially speaking.
Edna set aside the tangled web of unsatisfactory thought, to be straightened and corrected at a more convenient season. Miss Martha might come upstairs at any moment. She must decide what to say to them all.
She wondered if Sylvia had fled too hastily to take her few belongings. She crossed the room to the closet, and opened the door. It was empty, but on the floor lay the pillow slip which Sylvia had defended from John so heatedly. Edna looked at the white bag with some repugnance. There recurred to her the appealing look in the girl's eyes as she had hurried into the house yesterday noon. Edna stooped and lifted the bag. It was heavy and stiff. She brought it out into the room, and opened it with some shrinking. What met her eyes were a number of sheets of brown wrapping-paper. She drew one partly out. It was apparently smeared with dark paint. Hastily pulling the paper from the bag, she beheld a sketch of Beacon Island. She hurried over to the bed, and with eager hands drew sheet after sheet from the bag and spread them out. They formed three rows of sketches on the white coverlet, and Edna's eyes sparkled with interest as she recognized the subjects. The work had apparently been done with some blunt instrument instead of a brush. The effects were broad, after the manner of a charcoal drawing.
Edna compressed her lips as she gazed. Suddenly she crossed to an open window and leaned out. Fortune favored her. John Dunham was strolling in sight beyond the piazza. She called him softly. He heard, and she beckoned him beneath the window. "Can you come up here," she asked, "without letting the others know?"
Dunham assented with alacrity; but thought flies fast, and he had time for many misgivings as he mounted the stairs in bounds. Was Edna about to have it out with Sylvia, and was he being called as a witness to face a culprit and prove a position? If so, he promptly decided to have an acute attack of paresis.
Sylvia's door was ajar, and Edna standing by the bedside. "I needed somebody, and I chose you," she said over her shoulder. "Come and see what Sylvia has done."
Her tone was excited, and Dunham's heart beat fast as he paused at the door. What had Sylvia done?