"What does Lady Farley say about it?" asked Paul.
"She says I am old enough and wise enough to please myself, and to know my own business best."
"Then, if your decision is now made and my words are powerless to affect you one way or another, I may tell you what this act of yours means to me and to my people. It will probably be the saving of Joanna's life—at any rate it is giving her the one chance she has of recovery; and without you this one chance would have been denied her. After I have told you this, all expressions of gratitude would be superfluous, I think."
"Yes; please don't thank me; I don't want to be thanked," said Isabel breathlessly, "let us make all the necessary arrangements; for Joanna and I ought to be starting soon, if this foggy weather continues."
So Paul and Isabel set to work to plan poor Joanna's exodus out of England before the winter actually set in; and three weeks after this interview Isabel and Joanna went out to Davos Platz together, with the former's faithful old nurse to take care of and look after them.
The new life was very interesting to Isabel. She had hitherto lived in a world where sickness and death were put out of sight and forgotten as far as possible; but now she was suddenly plunged into the midst of a society of people who were all either ill or anxious. But these bore it bravely, and put on a cheerful courage; and if she had not known that all was not well with them, she would have found them pretty much the same as happier folks.
Joanna specially interested Isabel, and the two women were drawn very close together. Neither had ever had a sister; and a woman who has never had a sister has missed something which can never be made up to her in this world. Women who have no sisters share their confidences with their friends or their sisters-in-law, just as men who have no legs walk about on cork or wooden ones; but perfect satisfaction is not found in makeshifts. However anything is better than nothing; so Isabel and Joanna found much pleasure in each other's society.
Joanna did not talk much about herself; but when she did, it was with perfect ease and cheerfulness. She had been brought up in a circle where the things which are seen and temporal are not more familiar or real than the things which are unseen and eternal; and this familiarity and sense of nearness is of good comfort to such souls as feel forebodings of the chill and the darkness of the great Shadow.
"I minded dreadfully being ill at first," she said one day to Isabel, after they had been some weeks together, and their friendship was established, "I had meant to do so much work for God—in my own little world I really was doing it—and it seemed rather hard to be suddenly put by on the shelf as of no further use. I was actually getting so conceited that I thought none of the classes or meetings in Chayford would get on properly without me; and yet mother says in her last letter that my Bible-class has increased in numbers since Miss Dallicot became the leader in my place, while the Dorcas-meeting is doing more work than ever. As for my district, Alice Martin took it; and the people simply adore her, she is so sweet and pretty and can speak to them so beautifully. So the Lord can carry on His work without my help, though at one time I doubted it." And Joanna laughed.
"I did not know that Alice was good at work of that kind."