The Road to Understanding

by Eleanor H. Porter

It was not a long ride to the foot of the street that led up the hill to Burke Denby's home. With carefully minute directions as to the return home at night, Helen left her daughter halfway up the hill, with the huge wrought-iron gates of the Denby driveway just before her.

"And now remember everything—everything, dear," she faltered, clinging a little convulsively to her daughter's arm. "Dear, dear, but I'm not sure I ought to let you go—after all," she choked.

"Nonsense, mumsey! Of course you ought to let me go!"

"Then you must remember to tell me everything—when you come home to-night—everything. I shall want to know every single little thing that's happened!"

"I will, dear, I will. And don't worry. I'm sure I'm going to do all right," comforted the girl, plainly trying to quiet the anxious fear in her mother's voice. "And what a beautiful old place it is!" she went on, her admiring eyes sweeping the handsome house and spacious grounds beyond the gates. "I shall love it there, I know. And I'm so glad the doctor got it for me. Now, don't worry!" she finished with a gay wave of her hand as she turned and sped up the hill.

The mother, with a last lingering look and a sob fortunately smothered in the enshrouding veil, turned and hurried away in the opposite direction.

Many times before Betty's return late that afternoon, Helen wondered that a day, just one little day, could be so long. It seemed to her that each minute was an hour, and each hour a day, so slowly did the clock tick the time away. She tried to work, to sew, to read. But there seemed really nothing that she wanted to do except to stand at one of the windows, her eyes on the massive, white-pillared old house set in its wide sweep of green on the opposite hill.

What was happening over there? Was there a possible chance that Burke would question, suspect, discover—anything? How would he like—Betty? How would Betty like him? How would Betty do, anyway, in such a position? It was Betty's first experience in—in working for any one; and Betty—sweet and dear and loving as she was—had something of the Denby will and temper, as her mother had long since discovered. Betty was fearless and high-spirited. If she did not like—but what was happening over there?

And what would the outcome be? After all, perhaps, as the doctor had said, it was something of a comic opera and farce all in one—this thing she was doing. Very likely the whole thing, from the first, when she ran away years ago, had been absurd and preposterous, just as the doctor had said. And very likely Burke himself, when he found out, would think so, too. It was a fearsome thing—to take matters in her own hands as she had done, and attempt to twist the thread in Fate's hands, and wrest it away from what she feared was destruction—as if her own puny fingers could deal with Destiny!

And might it not be, after all, that she had been chasing a will-o'-the-wisp of fancied "culture" all these years? True, she no longer said "swell" and "grand," and she knew how to eat her soup quietly; but was that going to make Burke—love her? She realized now something of what it was that she had undertaken when she fled to the doctor years ago. She realized, too, that during these intervening years there had come to her a very real sense of what love, marriage, and a happy home ought to mean—and what they must mean if she were ever to be happy with Burke, or to make him happy.