"Oh, if nothin', I reckon," Nancy stammered.
"Sit over here nearer to me, Nan," Jane said after awhile. "I'm lonely myself today, and I've just heard something I want to tell you."
In no school could she have acquired that faculty for reaching one's confidence, and this artfully expressed feeling of loneliness touched a response in the girl's nature which she now frankly confessed by timidly snuggling against Jane's knees.
"Poor, tired thing," Jane murmured, her fingers touching Nancy's hair. "Do you sometimes fancy everyone unsympathetic?"
"Sort of," came a trembling little sigh.
Again the bees droned their drowsy lullaby. The song of the field hand was hushed, but in its place was the smell of new turned earth that told of a labor finished.
With every detail vividly drawn, she related the story of the blind girl in a remote wilderness which had achieved the name of Sunlight Patch; of what she had accomplished; of all she had given to the lives of those about her. And in a lowered voice told of the promise exacted of her brother, her only brother and support. When she finished, Nancy was looking up with wide open eyes.
"You mean to say she prayed for the only kin she had on earth to be struck dead if he ever went wrong?—an' him a man? Well, that surely is grit!"
"The thing is, Nan," Jane said softly, "that people with two eyes ought to do at least as much!"
Nancy arose and brushed her skirt.