"Poor dad!" thought Mary that night. "What he must have gone through! I'll bet he didn't think that love was the only thing in life. And—that other one," she hesitated, "who was 'wild after the girls,' Wally says, and finally ran off with one—I'll bet he didn't think so, either—before he got through—to say nothing of the poor thing who went with him. But dead fifteen or twenty years—that's the queerest part."
She found the cable again. It was dated Rio Janeiro—
"Gods sake cable two hundred dollars wife children sick desperate next week too late."
It was signed "Paul" and—the point to which Mary's attention was constantly returning—it wasn't fifteen or twenty years ago that this appeal had been received by her father.
The date of the cable was scarcely three years old.
CHAPTER XIV
For days Mary could think of little else, but as week followed week, her thoughts merged into memories—memories that were stored away and stirred in their hiding places less and less often.
"Dad knew best," she finally told herself. "He bore it in silence all those years, so it wouldn't worry me, and I'm not going to start now. Perhaps—he's dead, too. Anyhow," she sternly repeated, "I'm not going to worry. I've seen enough of worry to start doing that."
Besides, she had too much else on her mind—"to start doing that."
As the war in Europe had progressed—America drawing nearer the crimson whirlpool with every passing month—a Red Cross chapter was organized at New Bethel. Mary took active part in the work, and whenever visitors came to speak at the meetings, they seldom went away without being entertained at the house on the hill.