Constance looked up with a smile shining through the tears. "You're good, Myra, just like Dick! But I can't, you know. I must stay here."
"Why must you?" To the querist there seemed to be sufficiently good reasons, from the point of view of the proprieties, for setting Connie's decision aside mandatorily, but Myra had grown warier if not wiser in her year of cousin-kenning.
"There are reasons,—duties which I must not shirk."
"Are they namable?"
"Yes; Margaret is the name of one of them."
Myra's disapproval found vent in gentle foot-tappings. To the moderately compassionate on-looker it would seem that Constance had long since filled that measure of responsibility,—filled and heaped it to overflowing. But again the experienced one was discreet.
"As Dick would put it, you have 'angeled' Margaret for a year and more. Isn't she yet able to stand alone?"
Connie's answer was prompt and decisive. "Quite as well able as the best of us would be under similar conditions."
"I wouldn't make it conditional; but we've never been able to keep step in that journey. Why is Margaret's case exceptional?"
"Did I say it was? It isn't. She is just one of any number of poor girls who are trying to live honestly, with the barriers of innocence all down and an overwhelming temptation always beckoning."