“Are n’t they good!” said she.
He smoothed out the curving paper, and Marcia’s own face smiled forth its quaint and inscrutable witchery at him.
“I took it the day before she went away. There’s one to spare,” she suggested.
“Do you think she’d want me to have it?” he asked, his hungry gaze set upon the little print.
“You’re a nice boy,” said Miss Letitia Pritchard. (“And all the nicer,” she thought to herself, “for being so much a boy.”) “Yes; she’d be glad to have you have it, I think.”
“She did n’t say so?”
Sympathy for the eagerness of his tone softened the old maid’s smile. “No. She did n’t say so. She did n’t say anything about you, except that you’d come to see me. For a time I thought her prophecy was wrong.”
“I’d like to come again.”
“As often as you like,” she said kindly. “You’re one of three people she talked to me about, the night before she left. The others were Buddy—she is going to help him get an education when the time comes—and Eli Wade.” From day to day Jeremy had postponed the dreaded confessional visit to the Boot & Shoe Surgeon. “You’ve reminded me of an errand, Miss Pritchard,” he said.
Bidding her good-bye, he went direct to the Infirmary. The old practitioner sat hunched over a pair of white buckskins. He lifted a mild, but questioning face to Jeremy.