“But you shouldn’t have known Olivia,—it is unpardonable! If she played tricks upon you, you should not have taken advantage of them to make her acquaintance. That wasn’t fair to me!”
“I suppose not! But I protest against this deportation. The landscape hereabouts is only so much sky, snow and lumber without her.”
“We miss her, too,” replied Sister Theresa. “We have less to do!”
“And still I protest!” I declared, rising. “Sister Theresa, I thank you with all my heart for what you have said to me,—for the disposition to say it! And this debt to the estate is something, I promise you, that shall not trouble you.”
“Then there’s a truce between us! We are not enemies at all now, are we?”
“No; for Olivia’s sake, at least, we shall be friends.”
I went home and studied the time-table.
CHAPTER XVIII
GOLDEN BUTTERFLIES
If you are one of those captious people who must verify by the calendar every new moon you read of in a book, and if you are pained to discover the historian lifting anchor and spreading sail contrary to the reckonings of the nautical almanac, I beg to call your attention to these items from the time-table of the Mid-Western and Southern Railway for December, 1901.