"It is a lovely evening for a walk," he said. "But, Miss Wilbur, you don't propose to take it alone, I hope! Isn't your boarding place at some distance?"
She was not going directly home, Marion explained, not caring to admit the loneliness, and also what evidently seemed to Dr. Dennis the impropriety of having to traverse the street alone so often that it had failed to seem a strange thing to her. Eurie volunteered further information:
"We are going up to Annesley's Hall, to make arrangements for the tableau entertainment."
Now, it so happened that Dr. Dennis knew more about the tableau entertainment than Eurie did, and his few minutes of feeling that perhaps he had misjudged those girls, departed at once; so did his genial manner.
"Indeed!" he said, in the coldest tone imaginable, and almost immediately dropped back with his daughter.
There was a gentleman hurrying down the walk, evidently for the purpose of overtaking him. At this moment he pronounced the doctor's name.
"Walk on, Grace, I will join you in a moment," the girls heard Dr. Dennis say, and Grace stepped forward alone.
Marion glanced back. But a few weeks ago it would have been nothing to her that Grace Dennis or anyone else walked alone, so that she had no need for their company. But the law of unselfishness, which is the very essence of a true Christian life, was already beginning to work unconsciously in this girl's heart, and it made her turn now and say to Grace, with winning voice:
"Have you lost your companion? Come and walk with us until you can have him again. Miss Mitchell, Miss Dennis."
It was a fact that, though Eurie was of the same church with Grace Dennis, and though she knew Grace by sight, and bowed to her in the daytime, their familiarity with each other was not so sufficient as to insure a gas-light recognition.