“There was no mistake, Doctor Bayliss,” said I. “I told your son the truth, a very little of the truth.”
“The truth! But it couldn't be true, you know, as Herbert reported it to me. He said Miss Morley had left Mayberry, had gone away for some unexplained reason, and was not coming back—that you did not know where she had gone, that she had asked not to be hindered or followed or something. And he said—My word! he even said you, Knowles, had declared yourself to be neither her uncle nor her guardian. THAT couldn't be true, now could it!”
Again Hephzy and I looked at each other. Without speaking we reached the same conclusion. Hephzy voiced that conclusion.
“I guess, Doctor Bayliss,” she said, “that the time has come when you had better be told the whole truth, or as much of the whole truth about Frances as Hosy and I know. I'm goin' to tell it to you. It's a kind of long story, but I guess likely you ought to know it.”
She began to tell that story, beginning at the very beginning, with Ardelia and Strickland Morley and continuing on, through the history of the latter's rascality and the fleeing of the pair from America, to our own pilgrimage, the finding of Little Frank and the astonishing happenings since.
“She's gone,” she said. “She found out what sort of man her father really was and, bein' a high-spirited, proud girl—as proud and high-spirited as she is clever and pretty and good—she ran away and left us. We don't blame her, Hosy and I. We understand just how she feels and we've made up our minds to do as she asks and not try to follow her or try to bring her back to us against her will. We think the world of her. We haven't known her but a little while, but we've come—that is,” with a sudden glance in my direction, “I've come to love her as if she was my own. It pretty nigh kills me to have her go. When I think of her strugglin' along tryin' to earn her own way by singin' and—and all, I have to hold myself by main strength to keep from goin' after her and beggin' her on my knees to come back. But I sha'n't do it, because she doesn't want me to. Of course I hope and believe that some day she will come back, but until she does and of her own accord, I'm goin' to wait. And, if your son really cares for her as much as we—as I do, he'll wait, too.”
She paused and hastily dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief. I turned in order that the Doctor might not see my face. It was an unnecessary precaution. Doctor Bayliss' mind was busy, apparently, with but one thought.
“An opera singer!” he exclaimed, under his breath. “An opera singer! Herbert to marry an opera singer! The granddaughter of a Yankee sailor and—and—”
“And the daughter of an English thief,” put in Hephzy, sharply. “Maybe we'd better leave nationalities out, Doctor Bayliss. The Yankees have the best end of it, 'cordin' to my notion.”
He paid no attention to this.