Miss Everett stepped forward and drew the girl to her side, and Harold waited just long enough to see the fair head and the dark nestle together, and then took himself off to the house, satisfied that comfort had come at last.
“I have failed, Evie!” cried Rhoda, clasping her friend’s hands, and staring at her with the same expression of incredulous horror with which she had confronted her brother a couple of hours earlier. “Yes, darling. I know.”
“And what are you going to say to me, then?”
“Nothing, I think, for the moment, but that I love you dearly, and felt that I must come to be with you. Aren’t you surprised to see me, Rhoda?”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t feel anything. I wanted you, and then—there you were! It seemed quite natural.”
“But it was rather peculiar all the same. I have been staying with Tom, and we were both asked down to D— for a four days’ visit. That is only half an hour’s rail from here, as you know; so this morning when I saw the list in the paper I thought at once—‘I must see Rhoda! I will go down and chance finding her at home!’”
“Yes!”
“So I came, and am so glad to be with you, dear. I have seen your mother, and have promised to stay to lunch. I need not go back until four o’clock.”
“Oh, that’s nice. I like to have you. Evie, I believe it was the arithmetic. I was so ill, I could hardly think. You might as well know all now. It was my own doing. I had been working every morning before getting up, and that day I began at four. I tired myself out before the gong rang.”
“I guessed as much. Dorothy told me that she heard someone turning over leaves!”