“I think I’d better go home now,” announced little Anne on her return. “I heard the Angelus down at our church quite a long time ago, so it’s ’most my lunch time. You look kind of pale, Miss Anne, dear. Was that bad for me to pick up that paper? I thought it was only neat when it was lying around like that. Was that a sin? Like troubling Peter-two? It’s very, very awful hard to walk sinlessly in this world, isn’t it?”
“Oh, Anne, darling, of course it was only neat!” cried the girl, kissing little Anne heartily.
“Well, you can’t do sins unless you know they are wrong and just go ahead and mean to, but I kind of forget that; only when I recite it, you know,” said the thin theologian. “I’ve got to tell Peter ’was me took his these is, and nobody can tell what he’ll say to me! Mother won’t let him do anything, but she’ll talk to me, and that’s worse. It’s the most fearfullest of all when mother’s sorry! But I’ve got to be willing to bear it, if I didn’t do right, and I can offer it up. Good-bye, darling Miss Anne. I hope I didn’t make you sick with that paper; you look sicky.”
“Not a bit, funny little Anne. Good-bye, and come soon again,” she said, cheerfully.
Little Anne looked worried, she went slowly toward her acknowledgment of wrong-doing and her penance, but she forgot all about it as new thoughts took possession of her. She flew at her customary speed down the street, Cricket breathlessly running after her.
To Anne’s inexpressible relief Richard Latham telephoned to her to say that he would lunch out, and that there would be nothing to keep her within doors that lovely afternoon.
She gladly availed herself of this chance to get away from the familiar beauty of the garden and adjust her perturbed mind to her dismaying discovery. She went down through the garden and let herself out by the small gate at its rear that opened on a path which led to a pretty bit of woods of which she was fond. It must be set down in honesty that before she went out Anne went upstairs, picked up the paper which little Anne had faithfully laid exactly where she had found it, and made a copy for herself of the two stanzas which had so stirred her. Then she, like the smaller Anne, put the paper on the floor and went away.
She walked swiftly to the spot in the woods which she had in mind in setting forth and dropped on the mossy sod to think. She was not a vain girl, not prone to believe herself admired, not consciously seeking admiration. She was singularly direct in mind and simple in motives. She accepted herself, the fact that she was pretty, that she had several accomplishments and was generally liked, as a pleasant thing, but not to be emphasized more than any other pleasant fact like sunshine, or good green grass.
In her silent way Anne held strongly to strong purposes in life; young as she was she “had found herself,” as it is expressively put nowadays. And the person who is thus balanced, who actually has “found herself,” is not likely to waste time looking for other things or people.
In her close intimacy with Richard Latham for almost a year, she had been flooded with a pity for him that was always at high tide within her. She admired him for his beauty of character as much as for his gifts of mind. His gentle courtesy, his sweetness, the modesty that persevered in spite of the plaudits that he received, had inspired in her a passion of affectionate pity for him that rather excluded than led to love for him. Of herself in connection with him—beyond her ability to be useful to him, to serve him in his work, to brighten his days—she had never thought. That his reliance on her, his appreciation of her personally, as well as of what she did, might mean love for her, had never till that day crossed her mind. He was to her a man removed from this possibility no less by his misfortune than by his genius.