"This concerns you too, Jessie," he said.
For a moment a silence fell on them, as the wind gently stirred the lilacs in front of them and a humming bird on silken wings went flashing past, like a flower that had come alive.
"You are a teacher, your card says, at Purple Springs. Is that in the far North?" The ex-Premier endeavored to speak calmly.
"No," said Pearl, "it is only a hundred miles from here."
His face clouded with disappointment.
"But it was named for the valley in the far North, by a woman who came from there."
"Where is the woman now," he asked, with a fine attempt to make his question casual.
"I came to tell you about her," said Pearl, with evasion. "That is, of course, if you would like to hear. It is an interesting story."
He motioned to her to begin, trembling with excitement.
Pearl told the story that had been told to her the night she and Annie Gray had sat by the dying fire, told it, with many a touch of pathos and realism, which made it live before him. His eyes never left her face, though he could not discover how much she knew, and yet the very fact of her coming to him seemed to prove that she knew everything.