“You will have the funeral?”
“Yes—here. Day after to-morrow, because that will be Sunday, and her friends will be free to come.” Then, at what she saw in the older woman’s face, she said—“I’m not regretting Gloriana-Virginia, Mrs. Parker. She is infinitely better off, of course. But I am rebellious”—she did not know that she was giving voice to Peter’s bitter reflection beside Glory’s body—“because she had to die before she ever had a chance to live!”
“Yes, I know!” the president concurred with warm sympathy. “But there will be no more Glorys. I mean—conditions are steadily growing better, people are rousing——”
“That won’t bring her back,” said Glen, unsteadily.
“No. But—to our shame be it said—reforms are only born of human sacrifice!” she stopped short and looked at the girl. “You have your hat on— Am I keeping you?”
“I was going down to the mill.”
“I thought you were not running the mill at night this week.”
“We have not been, but the whistle blew just as I came home—I don’t understand it. I thought I had better go down.”
“Then, may I walk with you as far as the hotel?”
“Surely. I will just speak to Miss Ada—” She came back in an instant, and they set off down the hill together, and the doctor’s daughter was silent. What a night! Peter Parker under her roof, in her dear house; Luke Manders finding him there, and the terrible scene which had ensued, Glory’s death; the bewildering, breath-taking discovery that one might intensely dislike being touched by one person, and then, in the case of another person, not dislike it in the least, but on the contrary——