"Why, Sarah!" I said, in amazement.
The difficult red crept up to her honest eyes. She raised them and met mine, and what I saw there was very beautiful.
I put Peter off my lap.
"Run out and play for a while, dear," I said, "before tea."
And then,
"Sarah?"
"He's a good man, Miss Mavis," she answered, clutching the gowns to her, ruinously—my careful Sarah! "And we're neither of us so young, nor so flighty that we wouldn't know our own minds. Mr. Reynolds has written him that he has a buyer for the place, and we thought that when things was settled down here, Silas could come up North to Green Hill—and—"
"But, Sarah," I cried out, in childish dismay, "I can't lose you—I can't—"
She put the gowns on a nearby chair and touched my hair with her faithful old hand.
"Indeed, Miss Mavis," she said earnestly, "not for a hundred Silases would I leave you: But Silas spoke to the Doctor about a place—and the Doctor said he needed a man to drive for him, and so, if you want us, we could both stay on. No one could take care of you," she said, jealously, "except me."