Enid's fingers reached gropingly toward her new-found friend. Their two hands clasped and held fast.
"Auntie took me when I was a little girl. I was an orphan. She's been everything to me, and she adores me. But she doesn't like Tommy."
"Why not?"
"She hasn't anything really against him except that he's poor. It would kill her to have me leave her to marry him. I can't bring myself to do it. And yet I can't bring myself to give Tommy up." She was crying in earnest now, and the clasp of Persis' hand tightened.
"You can't and you oughtn't. There's too much sacrifice of love these days. Young fellows instead of having homes of their own are supporting two or three grown-up sisters and getting crabbed and bitter. And girls the Lord meant for wives and mothers stay at home because the old folks don't want to spare them. Nine times out of ten it's like Abraham sacrificing Isaac, and there's a he-goat somewhere round in the bushes that would do just as well."
"But it would seem so dreadfully ungrateful to disappoint her," gasped Enid Randolph with the air of one who longs to be disproved. "After she's done everything for me."
"Bless you, child, if you love and are sure of him, the mother who bore you wouldn't have a right to say no. And what's more, if you're sensible enough to go your own way, she'll probably end up by thinking he next thing to made the world and taking all the credit for the match. You're twenty-one, of course."
"Twenty-three."
"Then I wouldn't have any more of this underhanded business. Talk it out with your aunt, and unless she can show you good reasons for giving up your young man, you've got the best reason in the world for taking him."
Enid deliberated. Then very slowly she tore her letter to bits.