“No, thank you,” smiled Gail wanly. “I’m just a little fatigued.”
“Then don’t you come a step,” and Aunt Grace beamed down on her niece with infinite tenderness. She had an intuition, these days, that the girl was troubled; and her sympathies were ready for instant production. “You’ll have to tell me what to say, though. I’m so clumsy at it.”
“Just tell them the truth,” smiled Gail, and punching two pillows together, she stretched herself at full length on the divan.
Her Aunt Grace regarded her with a puzzled expression for a moment, and then she laughed.
“I see; you’re lying down.” She looked at Gail thoughtfully for a moment. “Dear, could you close your eyes?”
“Certainly,” agreed Gail, and the brown lashes curved down on her cheeks, though there was a sharp little glint from under the edges of her lids.
Her Aunt Grace stooped and kissed the smooth white brow, then she went downstairs and entered the library.
“Gail is lying down,” she primly reported. “Her eyes are closed.”
The library was quite steadily devoted to Vedder Court to-night. A highly important change had come into the fortunes of Market Square Church. It was as if a stone had been thrown into a group of cardboard houses. All the years of planning had gone the way of the wind, and the card houses had all to be built over again. The Cathedral had receded by a good five years, unless the force and fire of the Reverend Smith Boyd should be sufficient to coax capital out of the pockets of his millionaire congregation; and, in fact, that quite normal plan was already under advisement.
The five of this impromptu counsel were deep in the matter of ways and means, when a slender apparition, in clinging grey, came down the stairs. It was Gail, who, for some reason unknown, even to her, had decided that she was selfish; and the Reverend Smith Boyd’s heart ached as he saw the pallor on her delicately tinted cheeks and the dark tracing about her brown eyes. She slipped quietly in among them, her brown hair loosely waved, so that unexpected threads of gold shone in it when she passed under the chandelier, and she greeted the callers pleasantly, and sat down in the corner, very silent. She was glad that she had come. It was restful in this little circle of friends.