“I urge my darling to lower herself! Miss Sylvia, if you say that kind of thing to me again, you and I can scarcely be friends.”
“Jasper! Jasper!”
“We won’t talk about it,” said Jasper, with decision. “I love you, miss, and what is more, I respect and admire you, but I cannot rise as high as you, Miss Sylvia; I was not reared so. I do not think that my little Eve could have done other than she did when she was so tempted.”
“Then, Jasper, you are a bad friend to Evelyn—a very bad friend; and what is more, if there is great trouble at the school, and if Audrey gets into it, and if Evelyn herself will never tell, why, I must.”
“Oh, good gracious! you would not be so mean as that; and the poor, dear little innocent confided in you!”
“I do not want to be so mean, and I will not tell for a long, long time; but I will tell—I will—if no one else can put it right, for it is quite too cruel.”
Jasper looked long and full at Sylvia.
“This may mean a good deal,” she said—“more than you think. And have you no sense of honor, miss? What you are told in confidence, have you any right to give to the world?”
“I will not tell if I can help myself, but this matter has made me very unhappy indeed.”
Then Sylvia put on her shabby hat and went out. She passed the fowl-house, and stood for a moment, a sad smile on her face, looking down at the ill-fed birds. Then she went along the tiny shrubbery to the front entrance, and, accompanied as usual by her beloved Pilot, started forth. She was in her very shabbiest and oldest dress to-day, and the joy and brightness of her appearance of twenty-four hours ago had absolutely left her young face. It was Sunday morning, but Sylvia never went to church. She heard the bells ringing now. Sweetly they pealed across the valley, and one little church on the top of the hill sent forth a low and yet joyful chime. Sylvia longed to press her hands to her ears; she did not want to listen to the church bells. Those who went to church did right, not wrong; those who went to church listened to God’s Word, and followed the ways—the good and holy ways—of religion.