Nancy flashed him an approving glance.
“Oh, that's all right,” replied Martha frankly. “He knows where he can find me.”
| [1] | Can one say of a thing that it is lost if one knows where it is? |
CHAPTER XIII
A LETTER
Dear Mary,
“I don’t know how you will feel about it, but in spite of my careful chaperoning” [Miss Ashton smiled shrewdly to herself as she wrote that] “I’m afraid that I have let your little girl fall in love.
“I fancy I can see you stiffen up at that, and hear you say, ‘What nonsense! She is only a child.’ Perhaps she is in your eyes, still a little girl—I suppose that, to their own mothers, children never really grow up; but to others she is a very lovely and lovable young girl. She was always most attractive, but how wonderfully she has developed and improved during these last two years! I have not seen her, you know, since that summer she was so crushed by her uncle’s departure for Germany; and I imagine I see the change more clearly than you do.
“To get back to the subject in hand, I do not want to forestall Nancy’s confidences to you; for I am sure she will tell you about her new more-than-friend very soon, if she has not already; but I do want to give you my impressions of the case, as well as to let you have some information which will perhaps move you to smile, instead of frown, upon these two young things.
“James Jackson, the driver of the bus and conductor of our motor trip through Nova Scotia, is, except during the summer, a student at Harvard; and, from what I have found but, a very good student. This will be his senior year. His father and mother are well-known and highly esteemed descendants of the founders of the city. He has one brother, Edmund, who is at present running a lily farm in Bermuda. They are not wealthy people, but are very comfortable and live in one of the lovely old-fashioned houses in Cambridge. So much for his antecedents and position.