“It is splendid, glorious!” she cried. “If I stay in Beaconhite will you teach me how to do, and put me at something? I’ve got to pay back, a little, somehow!”
“You could do anything with the Italians, Miss Adair. Will you study the language? It isn’t hard to learn it. And you could do much else; you’re a dynamic creature. But ‘if you stay in Beaconhite’? Aren’t you sure of staying?” cried Mr. Lancaster.
“Not a bit,” declared Cis. “I don’t know what I may do, but this isn’t quite my own life. I love Miss Braithwaite a little more each day; I’d be thankful to go on here forever, if she needed me. She is greater than any other woman; there’s just one of her! But I don’t mean much here. I think there must be a place for me somewhere that will be my very own, something that I was meant to do. Sometimes I think I’ll go home where I came from, but that isn’t sensible, either. Oh, I don’t know! I’ll know, I suppose, when the time comes.”
“That’s good sense and good theology—which is tantamount, though lots of people don’t know it,” said Mr. Lancaster. “It seems to me that you have a decidedly real place here, as you put it. Miss Braithwaite is strong and active, but at sixty-five the goal is in sight. It seems to me that to stay on here, companion her, look after her, work in with her in her numerous ways of usefulness till you can carry them on alone as she drops out, is an opportunity anyone might welcome. Miss Braithwaite is a power for good; there is no one whom I admire more, and everyone, from the bishop of the diocese to that small lame boy in whom you are interested, turns to her for help. To prolong such a life and make it happier—of course there is no better way to prolong life than by making it a happy life—it seems to me I’d think several times before I decided that was not a worth while chance for a young thing like you!”
Cis returned the smile that Mr. Lancaster bent upon her, but she said:
“That all sounds beautiful, and it is more than worth while; the only trouble is that I can’t imagine my doing it! I wonder where Miss Braithwaite is? Don’t I hear Ellen bringing someone in here?”
Ellen pushed open the heavy doors of the library.
“Miss Lucas and Mr. Lucas, Miss Braithwaite,” she announced, and Cis looked up to see Mr. Wilmer Lucas coming forward, and behind him Jeanette Lucas.
“Oh, Miss Lucas!” Cis cried, and ran forward to greet Miss Lucas on a sort of track of red wool, trailing her crimson knitting by a needle caught in the fold of her gown, the little lame lad’s sweater which she was just finishing.
“Oh, Miss Lucas, I am so glad to see you! Ellen, please find Miss Braithwaite; she may be in her room. How kind of you to bring your niece here, Mr. Lucas! You know Mr. Lancaster? Miss Lucas, this is Miss Braithwaite’s friend, Mr. Lancaster.”