Grace, who had frowned at Jean’s too frank comments, now joined in the general smiles and added her greeting. “Of course you have come to stay a while with us, Greta?”
“Just a few days, Miss French, if you haven’t already found some place for me to start working.”
“There will be no hurry, Greta. You need a little vacation. The boys say that some one else is moving into your house.”
“And we have seen from the lake that the house is being repaired,” Nan added.
It took some time for all the explanations. The Klein place had been taken over by the man who had bought the rest of the farm land originally attached to the few acres left. It was rented now. Mrs. Klein and the two children were starting for Idaho, where a sister lived. “I am free,” said Greta, “though it was a hard way for it to happen.”
To Molly and Jean alone Greta told the details of her mother’s revelations. “She was hysterical, as I was told, but by the time I got there she was glad to have me take care of the children. I think that she told them I wasn’t her child so that I would have no share in the little bit of property. She was that way. She did not realize that all I wanted was to get away!
“Of course, she did not say a word about how her Greta died and I didn’t tell her what Molly heard. There was no use in making her feel worse than she did. She said that the night Greta died there was a dreadful lake storm and more than one boat went down on Lake Michigan. Jacob Klein felt so terrible about losing Greta that he walked and walked and walked through the woods and clear across to Lake Michigan before he knew it. I suppose he did, for it’s only thirty miles or so, and he may have had the horse or a boat at that. He never told her the truth about anything. He wanted to get away, and he could have taken one of the boats and gone out by the river.”
“I think that it’s farther than you think, Greta,” said Molly. “Were you ever there?”
“No. I wasn’t anywhere! But however that was, he found me out in Lake Michigan, lashed to something and unconscious. Isn’t it queer that none of my dreams or flashes of remembering had a boat in them? But I was afraid of the water at first, till Jacob Klein made me fish and told me to learn to swim. I found that I did already know how to swim, when I made up my mind to go into the water.
“We must have come part way through the woods, for I partly remember being made to walk and it seemed dark, though it must have been just before daylight, from what Mother said. I shall call her Mother till I get away from here, Jean.