"It means a good deal," said Bruce quietly. "Now, Robin, let us fly to the little grey house. I am off duty this morning, and I want to take you home."
"Wait till I find Hester, and smooth my hair," said Rob, going in pursuit of her friend.
"I'm so glad, dearest Rob, I'm so very glad! I don't think I'm going to be a sour maiden lady with no sympathy for romance. I have wanted so much to see you wake up to what you really felt," said Hester, arranging the pins in Rob's wayward locks.
"I think now that I must have known all along, and that is why I behaved so badly," said Rob meekly.
Hester laughed. "I think so too," she said.
"I wish you were not the only one without a share in this epidemic of happiness! France and Prue will be married by spring, even I am doomed, and only splendid Hester, the great-hearted Hester, is left out," said Rob, her arms over her friend's shoulders as she looked into her eyes with joy beginning to illuminate her own.
Hester shook her head. "I am glad and sympathetic; I am even able to understand what it means to you all, but for myself I am satisfied. I would rather help the child waifs than have my own little ones to look after; rather feel that I was doing for others than have the dearest of love to look after me," she said. "I have always been different from other girls, Rob, and my vocation is to be alone, though not lonely. Or, at least, not too lonely. Down in the bottom of my heart I am lonely, but I suspect that there is a lonely spot in every human heart, and that all human beings—or at least most of us—are a little hungry all their lives."
Rob did not answer, except to kiss Hester as she turned away. "You certainly are not much like other girls, my splendid Hester," she said. And she ran away to find Bruce.
"I thought you were never coming," he grumbled as she entered, already claiming her in true masculine fashion.
"Good-bye for to-day, Mrs. Flinders," said Rob, turning back a radiant face to the drab woman regarding her with incredible sympathy concealed beneath her flat chest.