Nancy was not so sure of this but she, like Joan and Patricia, had felt the lash upon her back and was chafing at delay.
Mary worked early and late to hasten the departure from The Gap. Always in Mary's consciousness was that threatening old woman on Thunder Peak.
With care and comfort old Becky was more alert; more suspicious. She was wondering why. And Mary felt that at any time she might defeat what daily was gaining a hold on Mary's suspicions. The woman tried hard to shield the secret from her own curiosity, but under all else lay the conviction that it was Nancy's toys which were in peril. And gradually the love that the silent, morose woman felt for the girl absorbed all other emotions. It was like having banked everything on a desired hope she was prepared to defend it. If her suspicions were true, then all the more must the secret be hid.
And so in November Doris and Nancy went to New York and Mary, apparently unmoved, saw them depart while she counted anew her assumed duties.
There was The Peak—and with winter to complicate her duties, it loomed ominously.
"And I'll have to back letters for old Jed." Mary had promised to write for the old man and to read from the Bible to him, as Nancy had always done. "And keep the old man alive as well." Mary sighed wearily. "And when there's a minute to rest—keep my own place decent." The cabin was the one bright thought and, because of that which had made the cabin possible, Mary bowed her back to her burdens.
"A strange woman is Mary," Doris confided to Nancy; "nothing seems to make any impression upon her."
Nancy opened her lovely blue eyes wide at this.
"Why, Aunt Dorrie," she replied, "Mary would die for us—and never mention it. She's made that still, faithful way."
Doris smiled, but did not change her mind. The people of the hills were never to be to her what they had been to Sister Angela—her people.