So they were going West! That was the plan. The man who had been unable to give his family a chance, who had been broken by this long illness of his wife’s, who had failed to make his place among men, was going West. His chance had come to him at last. Had it come through theft? Annie Laurie found herself wishing that they might indeed have the chance, these poor people who seemed never to have been able to step out into the sunshine. Yet had they a right to this chance—if it meant her defeat? Could she let them go this way, while she was left to struggle with poverty?
The door opened and a girl entered. Hannah! She was so slender that Annie Laurie, who was broad of shoulder, with a backbone that might have been made of steel, wondered how the poor thing managed to keep upright. Her face was ivory-colored, her frock an ill-fitting gingham of a hideous “watermelon” pink. She turned her dreadfully crossed eyes on Annie Laurie—or to be correct, turned one of them on her—and looked at her resentfully.
“This is sister Hannah, Annie Laurie,” said Sam in rather a stifled voice. “You two girls ought to know each other, you know.”
“How do you do?” said Hannah, miserable with shyness.
“Oh, I’m pretty well, thank you, Hannah,” Annie Laurie answered, and then she added: “But I can’t say I’m very happy. You wouldn’t expect that. I’m very, very lonely without my father.”
She had risen and stood before the girl, with her bald little statement of sorrow, and Hannah, forgetting herself and her fears for a moment, looked up at Annie Laurie with sympathy in her face.
“Oh,” she said, “it’s too bad. I—I cried after I heard of it.”
She seemed astonished at herself for saying so much, and Sam looked at her with amazement. Had Hannah actually cried over some one else’s troubles?
“Did you?” exclaimed Annie Laurie. “Oh, that was sweet of you, Hannah.”
She forgot her Aunt Adnah’s axiom that the Paces seldom kissed, and leaned forward and planted a warm kiss on Hannah’s cheek.