"Yes, I did!" said she. Miss Barbara was now quite pale.
"And you read the note which Mr. Bullock had put at the bottom of it?"
"Yes, I read it!" said Willy.
"And don't you know," said the other, "that to do such a thing was most—"
"Yes, I do!" interrupted Willy. "I knew it then and I know it now, but I don't care any more now than I did then! I put it there because I wanted to! And if you'll take it, Miss Barbara, and pay it back to me any time when you feel like it,—and you can pay me interest at ten per cent if you want to, and that will make it all right, you know; and oh, Miss Barbara! I know all about that sort of bill, because they used to come when my father was alive. And if you'd only take it, you don't know how happy I would be!"
At this she began to cry, and then Miss Barbara burst into tears, and the two sat down beside each other on a lounge and cried earnestly, hand in hand, for nearly ten minutes.
"I'm so glad you'll take it!" said Willy, when Miss Barbara went into her room, "and you may be just as sure as you're sure of anything that nobody but our two selves will ever know anything about it!"
Immediately after luncheon Miss Barbara went by herself to the post-office, and when she came back her sister said to her that New York must just be beginning to agree with her.
"It is astonishing," said Miss Eleanor, "how long it takes some people to get used to a change, but it often happens that if one stays long enough in the new place, great benefit will be experienced, whereas, if the stay is short, there may be no good result whatever!"
That afternoon Mrs. Cliff actually laughed at Miss Barbara—a thing she had never done before. They were in a large jewelry store where they were looking at clocks, and Miss Barbara, who had evinced a sudden interest in the beautiful things about her, called Mrs. Cliff's attention to a lovely necklace of pearls.