"Did you hear that Tom Allen and his girl are to be married at last?" asked Sister Hattie Jones, who was busily threading her needle.
"You don't mean it?" answered Rachel Winthrop. "I really thought he was going to 'play off' on her and marry Ellie."
"I don't know how you could think that, Aunt Rachel," said Ellen, a trifle sharply; "I have never had the least notion of trying to cut Luna out, and my friendship for Tom was of the most platonic nature, I assure you."
Mrs. Jones saw she had made a mistake, and to cover her confusion, she began on another subject.
"Our Mark says that these soldiers are getting pretty impudent around here. He says he has seen an officer riding around this ward in a sleigh every night for the last three weeks. And he says, too, that this stranger had one of our girls with him, for he saw her get out one night, and he declares it is one of the girls in our ward. But he won't tell who; he is going to get a better look at the girl, he says, before he tells anyone who it is. I declare I don't see what our silly girls are thinking of, to run around with these soldiers, who will ruin them as quick as a wink, and then if they felt like it, they would shoot 'em besides."
Diantha looked in quick surprise at Ellen, the moment this story began, and she saw with infinite alarm the sudden flush which spread over her friend's usually pale cheek; and with the quick intuition of love, she divined that Ellen was the guilty girl. What on earth could she do? The talk drifted on and on, and Diantha listened and kept her intent, loving gaze fixed upon the drooping eyes of her beloved friend. The two girls cleaned up the supper dishes. Ellen talked with rapid garrulity, as if to prevent a single word being said by her companion. At last, when bedtime came, Diantha said, as calmly and as indifferently as she could:
"I believe I'll stay all night with you, Ellie darling, for Aunt Clara is going out again tonight, she says, to nurse the sick; she has to go out so much, doesn't she? But what would we do without Aunt Clara? She is a whole Relief Society of herself, isn't she? You and I haven't had a good talk since Christmas."
"Well, all right. But," the girl added hesitatingly, "I'm afraid we'll have to sleep three in a bed, for Aunt Clara has sent Cousin Alice to sleep with me tonight."
"Never mind," cheerfully responded Diantha, resolved not to be balked in her endeavor to know more about her friend's walks and ways; "I can easily do that, for I often have extra company, and you and I don't mind crowding a bit."
The girls hurried up to their room, soon after the evening prayers were over, and Diantha looked in vain for a third bedfellow. But she refrained from asking where the invisible Alice was, for she instinctively felt that Ellen had lied to her to make an excuse to prevent the talk Diantha had resolved to have with her friend. Dian was a wise girl, and she felt instinctively that it would not be prudent to urge herself upon her friend's confidence. So she chatted on other topics, and they were soon undressed and in bed. For some reason, Dian felt unusually wakeful, and she lay for a long time awake, with a curious feeling, a sort of expectancy of something, or somebody, which made the chills of uncomfortable fear race up and down her back. But at last she fell asleep, trying dimly to account for her strange sensations, and wondering vaguely who was coming. Sometime in the night she awoke, half-startled, and in a moment she was conscious, wide awake, and in perfect control of her faculties. It was the complete instant wakefulness which comes to mothers with sick children, or to men who watch their homes and loved ones in times of danger! She wondered for one brief instant why she was not in her own room, and then it flashed over her. She reached out her hand, and although she was in some way curiously prepared for it, she found her companion not at her side, and she felt all the shock of surprised dread which that discovery would necessarily entail. She lay still a moment, trying to persuade herself that Ellen had gone down stairs for a drink, or that she had gone into Aunt Clara's room, for some purpose, and at last she called out softly: