“Dear Allie, it was all a mistake; it was me she cared for all the time. Oh! Allie, you must love her dearly for my sake.”
It seemed to take Allison a good while to read it, short as it was. When at last she looked up and met John’s eyes, a sudden rush of colour made her hide her face in her hands.
“Don’t be sorry, Allie; you would not if you knew all,” said John.
“Oh! no. It is not that I am sorry. But—he will not need me now. Oh! I am not sorry. I am glad for him.” But her voice trembled as she said it.
“Will he not need his sister? You would not say so if you knew what the thought of you has been to him all these years. You have not seen your brother for a long time, but it is you who have made a man of him, for all that.”
“Have I made a man of him? It has been with your good help then.”
“Yes, I think I may have helped him. We have been friends, and more, ever since we met that night by the lake shore.”
“Ah! he needed a friend then. I seemed to forget my fears for him, after I heard that you had found him. I do not know how to thank you for all you have been to him.”
“I will tell you how,” said John. But he did not. He rose and walked up and down again. After a little he sat down beside her, and had more to say. He spoke of his first meeting with her brother, of Willie’s illness, and of the good fortune that came to them both on the day when they took shelter from the rain in Mr Strong’s barn. He told her much more than that. Some things she had heard before, and some things she heard now for the first time. She listened to all with a lightened heart, and more than once the happy tears came to her eyes. And when John ended thus, “You will be proud of your brother yet, Allison,” she put out her hand, and John took it, and, for a moment, held it closely.
Before Allison came in John had said to Robert: