She tore it open, while Judith watched her face curiously. It flushed with joy.
“The governor will be here in the morning,” she said. “You don’t mind, do you, Cousin Judith?”
CHAPTER XXII
HOW SAM PARSONS EXPLAINED
“You caught me just right, my dear,” said the governor, smiling cheerily into the girl’s anxious face. “I had nothing of importance on hand at this time, so I ran away from half a hundred unimportant demands and—here I am.”
He came for breakfast and was as eager for Aunt Hyacinth’s peerless flapjacks as any of the youngsters, laughing and chatting with the entire family like a boy just out of school. But afterward he sat with Phoebe and Judith in the cosy sitting room and listened gravely to every detail of the young girl’s story.
Phoebe was very frank in her relation, concealing nothing that she had discovered or that had been confided to her. “I am supposed to keep some of these things secret,” she said; “but I believe this secrecy on the part of Toby’s friends, and their failure to get together, is going to send the boy to prison unless we take advantage of our knowledge and accomplish something practical. Anyhow, I can see no harm in confiding in you, Cousin John, even if no good comes of it.”
The governor nodded approval.
“That’s right, Phoebe,” he said encouragingly. “Dust all the shelves and let the grime settle where it will.”
Before this man had been drawn into politics and became first a senator and then twice governor of his state, he had been a lawyer of unusual prominence. His keen intellect followed the girl’s recital with comprehension and even “read between the lines.” During the story he saw probabilities she had never guessed. But he said: