“Noble? I? Sallie Cox? Now, nobody except Payson ever hinted at such a thing, and I hushed him up instantly. No, Ruth, it was nothing. I dare say Rachel or you would have thought of some grand project which would have been effectual, but I couldn’t think of anything to do but to tickle his vanity by making him the guest of honor at the best affair of the season.”
“Indeed, I think neither Rachel nor I could have thought of anything so sure to captivate a shallow mortal like Frank Mayo.”
“Set a thief to catch a thief,” said Sallie merrily. “I’m shallow myself, I knew how it would feel to have such a fine thing given for me. My dear, if the ball were only fine enough it would cure a broken heart.”
“Not if the heart were really broken, Sallie.”
“Well, you must admit that it would help some,” she said whimsically.
And so she went away and left the burden upon me. Then I, too, fell to devouring the papers, as I knew Sallie was doing with me. I went more than ever to the little brown house which lay in such peril, and I never saw Nellie with a paper in her hand that I did not shudder.
At last the thing we so dreaded came to pass. In the evening paper there was quite a sensational account of it. Thank Heaven, no name was given; but alas, the description of him, of his wife and five little children, was unmistakable. I felt as though I had sat still and watched a cat kill a bird. It was raining, not hard, but drearily, and the dead leaves fluttered against the windows as the chill wind blew them from where they clung. I was lonesome, and the autumn evening intensified my feelings. I glanced over to where a red glow came from Nellie’s windows. I fancied her sitting there with the paper in her hand, as she always did in the one spare moment of her busy day, with her heart crushed by the news. She would be alone, too, for Frank was out of town. Poor child! Poor child! I started up and decided to go and see her. If she didn’t want me I could come back, but what if she did want me and I was not there?
I found her sitting, as I had expected, alone. The paper, with the fatal page uppermost, lay in her lap, as if she had read it and laid it down. There was only the firelight in the room.
“Come in, dear,” she said gladly. “I was just thinking of you and wondering if such weather did not make you blue. Sit down here by the fire. It was sweet of you to come in the rain.”
She searched my distressed face anxiously as she spoke. I made no reply. My heart was too full at being comforted when I had come to comfort. As I sat on a low stool at her side she seemed to divine my mood, for she drew my head against her knee with a mother touch, and threaded my hair with a mother hand, and pressed down my eyelids as I have seen her do when she puts her baby to sleep. And though she must have felt the tears come, she did not appear to know.