"O yes, that wouldn't make any difference in my being glad."
"Well, I have come a great many thousands of miles to look at it. If I hadn't heard it was for sale, I suppose I should be somewhere about the second cataract of the Nile to-day."
"How did you hear about it?" said Missy, not knowing exactly what she said; but there are a great many times when it doesn't make much difference what you say, and this was one of those times. Mr. Andrews would have been a dull man if he hadn't felt pretty confident just then.
"I saw it in a newspaper, Miss Rothermel, and I felt that that announcement must mean some trouble to your family. I hoped it was money trouble, and that I might be able—might be permitted to do something to put things right."
"No," said Missy, with a sudden rush of tears to her eyes, "no, it isn't money trouble. Nobody can help us."
"I know absolutely nothing," said Mr. Andrews, hesitatingly. "I only landed last night from the steamer. I have seen no one to-day. I have only heard from the woman here that everybody was well—that there had been no death to break your home up, and I couldn't understand. Don't tell me if you don't want to. I hadn't any right to ask."
Missy was crying now, in earnest, as they walked up the path, and Mr. Andrews looked dreadfully distressed.
"O no," she said, through her tears, "it's a comfort to find anybody that doesn't know. Everybody here knows so horridly well! I never talk to anybody. I haven't said a word about it to anyone for months and months. It's a comfort to talk to you about it—if I ever can—only I've got crying and I can't stop."
She sat down on the steps of the summer parlor, where it was sheltered and where the afternoon sun was still shining. Mr. Andrews sat down silently beside her, and after a few more struggles with her tears she took her hands away from her face and began to tell him the story of the past year. Her eyes were a trifle red, and her skin mottled with her strong emotion; but I don't think Mr. Andrews minded.
"Mamma has gone away from me," she said, "to be with St. John and help him in his work. She has founded a sort of religious house, of which she isn't to be all the head, or anything like that, I believe; but a Sisterhood are there, of which she is an associate, and she sees St. John every day, and the room in which she lives opens into the church that St. John gave the money to buy—and they do a great and beautiful work among poor people and they are very happy.