"And just think, you're going to see him tomorrow, Zara! He's well, and as soon as he heard that you were here and safe, he stopped worrying. That was his chief trouble—he seemed to think more about what would happen to you than that he was in trouble himself."
"I knew he'd be thinking about me," said Zara, "He always did, even when he had most to bother him."
"I was sure he was a good father, Zara, when I heard you talk about him—and I've been surer of it than ever since I've had a chance to find out about him. My cousin, who's a lawyer, you know, is going to see that he is properly treated, and be says that Mr. Weeks, who tried so hard to make you stay behind and work for him, is at the bottom of all the trouble."
Zara shuddered at the name.
"How I hate that Farmer Weeks!" she exclaimed.
Eleanor Mercer sighed and shook her head. She couldn't blame Zara for hating the man, and yet, as she well knew, the spirit in the little foreign girl that cherished hatred and ideas of revenge was bad—bad for her. But how to eradicate it, and to make Zara feel more charitable, was something that puzzled the Guardian mightily, was, as she foresaw, likely to puzzle her still more. She left the two girls together, then, to answer a call from outside the room.
"I don't exactly like Farmer Weeks myself," said Bessie, thoughtfully, when they were alone. "But what's the use of hating him, Zara?"
"Why, Bessie! He made us run away from Hedgeville—he made me anyhow. And if he'd had his way, he'd have taken me back, and had me bound over to work for him just for board until I was twenty-one, if I hadn't starved to death first. You know what a miser he is."
"Yes, that's true enough, Zara. But, after all, if it hadn't happened that way, we'd never have met Miss Eleanor and the Camp Fire Girls, would we? And you're not sorry for that, are you?"
Zara's face, which had grown hard, softened.