“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” Then her face sobered. “I’ve just telephoned to Mrs. Carter—I mean Mrs. Johnson Carter,” she explained, blushing suddenly; “and there doesn’t seem to be anything that we can do.”
The colonel nodded thoughtfully.
“I saw Dr. Barbour last night. He says there’s nothing we can do.”
Virginia looked thoughtfully across the green lawn toward the street. It was screened from view here by the colonel’s horse-chestnut, but she glimpsed a strip of the street below the side gate. The sunlight, shining through the honeysuckle on the veranda, flashed on her white gown with glorification, as if it shouted halleluiah, and it shone, too, in her clear eyes. The colonel, who was watching her, thought her the loveliest thing on earth.
“I’m afraid there’s a terrible time down there,” she remarked regretfully. “I mean at the Carters.”
The colonel assented. He was thinking. He dreaded to tell her.
“Jinny, Plato says that——”
He got no farther; she had uttered a soft exclamation and gone down the steps.
“There’s Dan, grandpa!” she said in evident surprise.
The colonel watched her go on to meet Daniel Carter and he saw the change in the young man’s face as they met on the lawn. Daniel was very pale, and he limped badly toward her.