She flung off her wet clothing, slipped on a dressing gown and sat down at the table near the window.
"What are you going to do?" Nan asked curiously.
"Write to Dad," Jo flung over her shoulder. "I'm going to tell him what I saw—or thought I saw—to-day and he can do as he thinks best about it."
Although Andrew Simmer—or the man Jo took to be him—formed the major part of the girls' conversation during the next few days, nothing came of that strange experience on the lake.
Meanwhile, Jo received letters from home that were anything but cheering. Her father was struggling heroically to save his business from utter ruin, and in the struggle was losing his health. That was what Jo read between the lines of her mother's resolutely cheerful letters and her father's brief scrawls. Neither of her parents seemed to attach much importance to her account of the man she had taken to be Andrew Simmer and as day followed day Jo herself began to believe that she must have been mistaken.
The good news came from Miss Emma. The latter wrote in glowing terms of improvement in the state of her health and her hope that before many months had passed she might be cured.
Then one day Jo received a cordial note of appreciation from Mrs. Harrison in which she said that Jo's weekly "journal" was playing an important part in the invalid's improvement, both physical and mental.
"She is living her own youth over again through you, my dear," wrote Nan's mother. "She actually seems to be growing younger. She reads your letters again and again and laughs like a girl over them. Each day she tries to stand, and yesterday, for the first time, succeeded. For a full moment she stood by herself without support and has been greatly excited over it ever since. We now hope for her ultimate recovery, and if such a happy thing should come to pass, you, my dear girl, will be largely responsible for it. You seem to have given our poor invalid a new interest in life, and we are very, very grateful to you."
"As though I shouldn't be the grateful one!" thought Jo, as she folded the letter and put it back in the envelope. "They all seem to forget that!"
Meanwhile great preparations were being made for the boat races.