"O won't you let me stay awhile with you?" she asked gently, "The day must be very long!"
Alma forgot her pride. Her mind relaxed under the strange personality of this young friend. For half an hour they talked. Indeed Alma afterward wondered why she had conversed the most. She found herself gradually confiding her innermost trials and fears—hopes she had none—and even went so far as to show Edith how she was to blame for all the disgrace, and not Will.
Finally she was in tears in Edith's arms, and Edith wept with her.
The bell rang suddenly and they drew apart.
"It is only Dr. Cadman—you know him? Don't go."
"George Cadman! no, I cannot stay. May I come again?"
"Yes, indeed. O thank you for your sweet sympathy."
Edith kissed her forehead and hurried away.
In the hallway, she met George. He took her proffered hand with no sign of emotion, and "hoped that she was well," in ordinary friendliness. Then he took from his pocket a letter.
"I was going to call upon you to give you this letter," he said gravely. "You remember me telling you of that sweet little 'Mormon' girl that I met out West? I have heard from her now and then since my return, and it hardly seems possible that now she is grown to womanhood,—just about your age. She writes that she is coming on a mission in a few weeks, and I can imagine she'll be quite a charming young lady, from what she was as a child. She'll be strange and quite lonesome at first. She says there are mission headquarters here somewhere, but she doesn't know any of these mission people. May I bring her to call on you when she comes?"