Still Joan was not ready to answer, and Effie May sighed. "You needn't have gone so far as that," she said, "I'd have fixed it for you somehow—I'm not going to forget what you've done for me, Joan. Not telling, treating me just as if—it was all right. You're a bigger woman than you know you are," she added, gravely. "I'll make it up to you some day, see if I don't."
Joan gave her a quick, straight look. "If you mean money, Effie May, and I think you do, we'd better come to an understanding at once. I'm keeping my counsel about—about your affairs; I'm helping you commit a fraud, you know—entirely on my father's account. For myself—that's another matter. I appreciate your kindness, I know you have meant to do your best, but—"
"But you're done with me?" finished the other.
"Yes. I shall only see so much of you hereafter as is necessary to keep Father from suspecting anything. As for your money,"—the girl's voice shook—"neither I nor my husband will ever touch a cent of it under any circumstances. Do you understand? We do not forget how it was—earned."
The other sighed again. "Well, dearie, don't forget that it was earned, good and plenty!—And I've done you one good turn already," she remarked sotto voce, as the girl turned away to greet her fiancé.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Joan and Archibald were married two weeks later, very quietly, before only her family, resisting all the Major's importunities to make an occasion of it. Nor would the girl accept a trousseau.
"If I need any more clothes than I've got already, Archie will buy them for me. Won't you, old boy?" she said, slipping her hand into his.
Archie, with the happy consciousness of a rapidly growing business and several years' savings in a Building Association replied proudly that he would.