"Ole miss is jes' a plain moon-chile now," Sally confided to Marcia Lowe at one of their private conferences; "it's right silly to oppose her."
"Yes, give her everything you can, Sally, and oh! if she ever has flashes of reason get her to talk and—remember what she says!"
"Deed and deed I will," promised Sally. "And if she ever do get her wits back it will be in dat ole libr'y-room. She acts right human thar at times."
Marcia Lowe was sorely puzzled about Cynthia those days. If she were only sure that Ann Walden would never recover her reason she would take her chances with the girl and plead Theodore Starr's cause, but with no actual proof, and with Ann Walden's evident past instruction to Cynthia, she hesitated to make her own claims. Then, too, there were times when doubt rose in her mind, not as to her uncle, but Cynthia's parentage. There might never have been a child born to Queenie Walden. The Hollow story of adoption might be true after all. That would have accounted for old Miss Walden's bitter resentment. It was all very difficult and confusing, but in the meantime she could love the girl, and do, indirectly, for her what personally she could not.
Oftener and oftener the little doctor went to the church by The Way and "sat with Uncle Theodore," as she put it. It was less lonely there; the store was near by and the passers-by were becoming more friendly. Occasionally they dropped in. Tod Greeley and old Townley more than the others, and chatted sociably. Marcia Lowe had much to be grateful for, and when, one morning two weeks after Morley had been pronounced cured by his faithful doctor-nurse, he came to her, as she sat in the church, and said quietly:
"Miss Lowe, I'm going up yon——" pointing to his own cabin, seen now between the bare trees, "to straighten it up a bit," she wept as if her heart would break. Martin did not witness the outbreak; he had set forth upon his task. Marcia Lowe was alone and upon her knees.
"Dear God!" she repeated over and over; "dear God! he is saved. He'll open the way to others."
Martin Morley went upon his new course unheeded for a time, for a tragic happening to Cynthia and a calamity to the community threw the little doctor and many others into chaos.
Cynthia had been a month in Crothers' factory, when one late afternoon he said to her:
"Little miss, could you bide at The Forge tonight?" Cynthia started back and looked at him.