“This Mrs. Dana I told you of, seemed very kind to her, and I think the girl felt better with her than she would with us. She was going to Chicago with Mrs. Dana, and Jack was going with them. You remember Jack?”
Yes, Maude did remember Jack, the great, big-hearted fellow, who had been at Oakwood for a few weeks, two years before, and whom Georgie had kept in the background as much as possible, notwithstanding that she petted and caressed, and made much of him, and called him “Jackey” and “dear Jack,” when none but the family were present to see him and know he was her half-brother.
“So good in Georgie, and shows such an admirable principle in her not to be ashamed of that great good-natured bear of a fellow,” Mrs. Burton had said to Maude; and Maude, remembering the times when the “great, good-natured bear of a fellow” had been introduced to any of Georgie’s fashionable friends who chanced to stumble upon him, simply as “Mr. Heyford,” and not as “my brother,” had her own opinion upon that subject as upon many others.
She had liked Jack Heyford very much, and felt that he was a man to be trusted in any emergency, and when she heard that Edna was with him, she said impulsively:
“I know she is safe if Mr. Heyford has her in charge. I would trust him sooner than any man I ever saw, and know I should not be deceived.”
“You might do that, Maude, you might. Jack is the truest, noblest of men,” Georgie said, and her voice trembled as she said it, while Maude actually thought a tear glittered in her black eyes, as she paid this unwonted tribute to her brother.
“That reminds me;” said Mrs. Burton, wiping her own eyes from sympathy with Georgie’s emotion, “what about that little child, and what will your brother do, as you did not go on with him?”
The dewy look in Georgie’s eye was gone in a moment, and in its place there came a strange gleam, half pain and half remorse, as she answered:
“I shall go to Chicago in a few days.”
“Is that necessary?” Mrs. Burton asked, and Georgie replied: