CHAPTER XXI
THE PUZZLE DEEPENS
Grace experienced a pleasure in being at home for Easter so deep as to be akin to pain. When as a student at Overton she had traveled happily home for her Christmas and Easter vacations there had been a difference. Then, her classmates had much to do with making it easier to be away from her adored father and mother. But now that she had bravely launched her boat on the tempestuous sea of work, she found that home was a far distant shore, for whose cheery lights she often yearned. To be sure Emma was a never-failing source of consolation, but there were more times than one when the clutching fingers of homesickness were at her throat.
To Mr. and Mrs. Harlowe, Emma Dean was an unfailing source of amusement and delight. In Hippy, too, she found a kindred spirit, and when Elfreda arrived the funny trio was complete. It seemed to Grace that she had not laughed so much in years. Anne, Jessica and Reddy had not been able to join their friends for the Easter holidays and were loudly mourned and sorely missed. Tom Gray managed to come on for a two days' visit and cause Grace the only unhappy moments she spent at home by again asking her to give up her beloved work to marry him.
"I'm so sorry for Tom," she confided to her mother, on the night before leaving home to return to Overton, "but I can't give up my work, even for him. Really and truly, mother, I wish I did love Tom in the way he wants me to love him, but I don't. I feel toward him just as I felt when I first met him. He's a good comrade; nothing more."
"If you loved Tom, your father and I would be glad to welcome him as our son, Grace," was her mother's quiet reply. "He is a remarkably fine type of young man, but unless you reach the point where you are certain that he is, and always will be, the one man in the world for you, you would be doing not only yourself but him too, the greatest possible injury if you promised to marry him."
"That is just it!" exclaimed Grace. "I told him so, but I know that didn't console him. Last June when I came home from Overton I thought perhaps I might say 'yes' later on. But now that I've been working for almost a year I find I'd rather keep on working. It would be dreadful, of course, if some day I should suddenly discover that I did love him enough to marry him and then he shouldn't ask me. That isn't likely to happen. I don't believe I could give up my work for any man. My whole heart is in it."
In spite of her declaration of unswerving loyalty to her work, more than once, Tom's fine resolute face rose before Grace on the return journey to Overton. During the afternoon Emma, usually loquacious, became absorbed in a book, so that Grace, who could not settle herself to read, had altogether too much opportunity for reflection.
She was inwardly thankful when the lights of Overton twinkled into view. Emma was still deep in her book. "We are almost there, Emma," she reminded.
Emma glanced out of the window, then closed her book and began to gather up her belongings.