Mrs. Ingham-Baker reflected for a moment.
“We might go in the Croonah with Luke,” she then observed timidly.
“Ye-es.”
And after a little while Mrs. Ingham-Baker rose and bade her daughter good-night.
Agatha remained before the fire in the low chair with her face resting on her two hands, and who can tell all that she was thinking? For the thoughts of youth are very quick. They are different from the thoughts of maturity, inasmuch as they rise higher into happiness and descend deeper into misery. Agatha Ingham-Baker knew that she had her own life to shape, with only such blundering, well-meant assistance as her mother could give her. She had found out that the world cannot pause to help the stricken, or to give a hand to the fallen, but that it always has leisure to cringe and make way for the successful.
Other girls had been successful. Why should not she? And if--and if--
The next morning at breakfast Mrs. Ingham-Baker took an opportunity of asking Mrs. Harrington if she knew Malta.
“Malta,” answered the grey lady, “is a sort of Nursery India. I have known girls marry at Malta, but I have known more who were obliged to go to India.”
“That,” answered Mrs. Ingham-Baker, “is exactly what I am afraid of.”
“Having to go on to India?” inquired Mrs. Harrington, looking over her letters.