Priscilla did not pretend to be as altruistic as Martine, though both professed to take Amy for their model. Yet letters between Eunice and Priscilla passed back and forth constantly, and after reading them Priscilla was apt to sigh, and fall into a brown study; for Eunice, having for the first time found a confidante of her own age, opened her heart almost too freely, and in emphasizing the disappointments of her daily life, sometimes threw a cloud over her friend. This is a mistake made by some young letter-writers. They write intensely of personal disappointments that soon pass away. Yet the letter that they send seems to give permanence to their troubles, and if the person to whom they write is sensitive, she pictures the absent one as continually unhappy.
Eunice and Balfour Airton were brother and sister living with their mother in Annapolis. They had been able to make pleasanter than it might have been the stay of Mrs. Redmond and the three girls in the old town.
Eunice and Priscilla had soon become warm friends, and after their comparatively short acquaintance parted almost in tears. The Airtons were descended from Tories who had gone to Nova Scotia after the Revolution, and had always been highly respected. Even before the death of Eunice's father, however, they had lost much of their property, and were under a heavy strain to make both ends meet. Balfour Airton, who was a year or two older than Martine, was working his way through college. In his vacations he served as clerk in a grocery shop. Indeed, Martine had made his acquaintance one day when lost in the fog on the North Mountain. She had been rescued by Balfour, who fortunately drove up in his grocery cart.
Balfour proved a most companionable boy, and his energy and industry made a great impression on Martine, when she contrasted him with the idler college boys whom she knew.
By a combination of proofs needless to describe here, Martine discovered that she and the Airtons were third cousins, since their great-great-grandfather and hers, Thomas Blair, was the Tory exile who had gone to Nova Scotia after the Revolution. In the same way Edith Blair, Brenda's great friend, was a cousin of Eunice and Balfour, and Martine's first impulse on returning home had been to urge her father and Mr. Blair to provide for Balfour, so that he no longer need earn his way through college.
Fortunately enough, before she had spoken to her father, she talked the matter over with Mrs. Redmond.
"My dear Martine, I sincerely hope that you will change your mind about this. Or, if you do not, hope that your father and Mr. Blair will be hard-hearted enough to refuse your request."
"How hard-hearted you are, Mrs. Redmond!"
"No, indeed, not hard-hearted—only hard-headed."
"What do you mean?"