“Not unless you go to China. I’ll send you a letter 233 there like I used to send to Prince Quippi.” There was a sudden pathos in her tone.
“Will you? Oh, Leigh, will you?” Thaine asked, gaily, looking down into her face, white and dainty in the soft light. “Quippi never answered one of them, but I would if I was over there, and I may go yet. There’s no telling.”
Leigh looked up with her eyes full of pain.
“Why, I didn’t mean to tease you,” Thaine declared.
“Thaine, Pryor Gaines is to start to China tomorrow. He’s been planning it for weeks and weeks. He’s going to be a missionary and he’ll never come back again—and—and there is so much for me to do when he is gone. He has been such a kind helper all these years. His refined taste has meant so much to me in the study of painting, and I need him now.”
Thaine gave a low whistle of surprise. Leigh’s eyes were full of tears, but Thaine would not have dared to take her in his arms, as he had taken Jo Bennington.
“Little neighbor, we’ve been playmates nearly all our lives. Can’t I help you in some way?” he asked gently.
“Yes, you can,” Leigh replied in a low voice. “There are some things I must do for Uncle Jim and when you are doing for people you can’t tell them nor depend on their advice. When Pryor is gone, may I ask you sometimes what to do? I won’t bother you often.”
Asher Aydelot had declared that Alice Leigh was the prettiest girl in Ohio in her day.
The pink-tinted creamy lilies looking up from the still surface of the lakelet were not so fair as the pink-tinted face of Alice Leigh’s daughter, framed in the soft brown shadows of her hair with a hint of gold in the ripples at 234 the white temples. And behind the face, looking out through long-lashed violet eyes, was loving sacrifice and utter self-forgetfulness.