“Indeed I shall be very glad to meet your mother.” Then smiling tenderly at the girl whose hand he still held, he said: “You do feel stronger today, don’t you, sister?” She nodded happily, then away the two boys ran.
An hour later, refreshed and sleek-looking after their swim, they sat at a small table on the pine-sheltered side porch and ate the good lunch Sing Long had prepared for them.
“This is great!” Charles enthusiastically exclaimed. “I’d like Lenora to see it.”
“Better still, in a few days, when she is able to walk this far, we will invite the girls to dine.” Harold hesitated, flushed a little and added as an after thought: “Of course we’ll ask my sister, too.” Again he had completely forgotten Gwynette. His good resolution was going to be hard to put into effect, it would seem.
“I shall be glad to meet your mother and also your sister,” Charles was saying.
An impulse came to Harold to confide in Charles. Ought he or ought he not? He knew that he could trust his new friend and his advice might be invaluable. And so he began hesitatingly: “I’m going to tell you something, Charles, which I never told to anyone else. In fact, it’s only recently that Mother realized I knew about it. But now a complication has risen. We, Mother and I, don’t know what is best to do, and what is more, Silas and Susan Warner have to be considered.”
“Don’t tell me unless you are quite sure that you want to, old man,” Charles said in his frank, friendly way, adding, “We make confidences, sometimes, rather on an impulse, and wish later that we had not.”
“Yes, I know. There are fellows I wouldn’t trust to keep the matter dark, but I know that you will. We especially do not wish Jenny Warner to know or Gwynette, my sister, until we have figured out whether or not it would be best. Of course, my mother and the Warners thought they were doing the right thing. Well, I won’t keep you wondering about it any longer. I’ll tell you the whole story as Mother told it to me only two days ago.”
Charles listened seriously. They had finished their lunch and had sauntered down to the cliff before the tale was completed.
“That certainly is a problem,” was the first comment. “I can easily understand that your mother wished to keep the matter a secret, but I do feel sorry for the girls. No one knows the comfort my sister has been to me. I would have lost a great joy out of my life if she had been taken from me—if we had grown up without knowing each other.”