“Your way to what?”
“Why, to helping her, of course. She has undertaken something that frightens me when I think of it. This is the point: She has made up her mind to come back here, earn her own living decently, face the past out and live it down here among those who know that past best.”
“That’s a resolution that will last about three weeks.”
“No, I think she is determined enough. But I fear that she cruelly underestimates the difficulties of her task. To me it looks hopeless, and I’ve thought it over pretty steadily the last few days.”
“Pardon my asking you,” said Horace, “but you have confided thus far in me—what the deuce have you got to do with either her success or her failure?”
“I’ve told you that I was her teacher,” answered Reuben, still with the slow, grave voice. “That in itself would give me an interest in her. But there has been a definite claim made on me in her behalf. You remember Seth Fairchild, don’t you?”
“Perfectly. He edits a paper down in Tecumseh, doesn’t he? He did, I know, when I went abroad.”
“Yes. Well, his wife—who was his cousin, Annie Fairchild, and who took the Burfield school after I left it to study law—she happens to be an angel. She is the sort of woman who, when you know her, enables you to understand all the exalted and sublime things that have ever been written about her sex. Well, a year or so after she married Seth and went to live in Tecumseh, she came to hear about poor Jessica Lawton, and her woman’s heart prompted her to hunt the girl up and give her a chance for her life. I don’t know much about what followed—this all happened a good many months ago—but I get a letter now from Seth, telling me that the girl is resolved to come home, and that his wife wants me to do all I can to help her.”
“Well, that’s what I call letting a friend in for a particularly nice thing.”
“Oh, don’t misunderstand me,” said Reuben; “I shall be only too glad if I can serve the poor girl. But how to do it—that’s what troubles me.”