"You're COMIN' AGAIN?"
"Yes, oh, yes. I shall come as long as he'll let me. I know he wants me to. I know I HAVE helped a little. He spoke—beautifully about that to-day. But, whether, after he finds out—" Her voice choked into silence and she turned her head quite away.
"There, there, dear, don't you fret," Susan comforted her. "You jest go home and think no more about it.
When thinkin' won't mend it,
Then thinkin' won't end it.
So what's the use? When you get ready, you jest come again; an' you keep a-comin', too. It'll all work out right. You see if it don't."
"Thank you, Susan. Oh, I'll come as long as I can," sighed the girl, turning to go. "But I'm not so sure how it'll turn out," she finished with a wistful smile over her shoulder as she opened the door.
CHAPTER XXII
HOW COULD YOU, MAZIE?
As Miss Dorothy herself had said, it could not, of course, continue. She came once, and once again to see Keith; and in spite of her efforts to make her position clear to him, her secret still remained her own. Then, on the third visit, the dreaded disclosure came, naturally, and in the simplest, most unexpected way; yet in a way that would most certainly have been the last choice of Miss Dorothy herself could she have had aught to say about it.
The two, Keith and Dorothy, had had a wonderful hour over a book that
Dorothy had brought to read. They had been sitting on the porch, and
Dorothy had risen to go when there came a light tread on the front
walk and Mazie Sanborn tripped up the porch steps.