"Let some one, who wants to, earn it for you then."
In the silence that followed Mrs. Pickens devoutly hoped that her bluntness had not hurt Dick's cause.
"Of course I can support myself," Hertha said at length in a low voice, "I have already been a companion. I would rather do that again than just to marry for a home. How do you know you are going to like the home you get? If you're a companion you can leave it, but if you're married you're expected to stay on no matter how much you may hate every step you take and dread the thought of to-morrow!"
"Of course," Mrs. Pickens made haste to say, in some consternation, "you mustn't marry if you feel like that!"
Hertha's voice was hardly audible. "I don't feel that way about Dick to-day, but I don't know how I might feel to-morrow."
Her valley of indecision was black indeed; but Bob came to say good-night and she forgot it for a time in her happiness with the child.
June flowered with tropical luxuriance in the city park. Wonderful blue lilies, that Cleopatra might have inhaled for fragrance, floated on the little pond by the side of their less foreign white and yellow neighbors. Roses of all varieties and color grew in straight lines in the Italian garden. Rhododendrons massed the hillside, gorgeous rose color, and honeysuckle and sweet-smelling shrubs lined the paths or clambered over the rustic arbors. There were times when Hertha, country lover that she was, sighed at the studied prettiness of it all and waxed weary at the constant stream of people who never gave Bob or herself a chance to be alone, but it was much better than the view of the East-side elevated; so, though she had made no friend whom she loved as she loved Kathleen, she did not regret her change of residence. But during each day, in the outing that she allowed herself, far back in her mind, whether feeding the ducks and goldfish or retailing a new phase in the history of Tom-of-the-Woods, there was a sense of irksome responsibility, of the necessity shortly of deciding upon the next step in life.
"I had a letter from Dick to-day," Mrs. Pickens announced to Hertha one evening in the third week of his departure.
She had not mentioned him before, except casually, since the night they had talked in her room.
"What does he say?" Hertha asked.