"Yes, she knows," Mrs. Whaley sighed, resignedly. "Her father came in and let it out awfully rough-like. I hold that against him, so I do. He showed her the paper that it was in and told her that, although the court had dissolved the marriage tie, God had made the separation doubly sure. Tilly sat sorter dead-like for a long time. That was yesterday evening about sundown. I tried to comfort her, but she shudders and screams when me or her pa comes near her. This morning the doctor came to see her. I sent for him. He said she had to have a change. He was mad at her pa, and they had sharp words at the gate. The doctor said she simply must not stay here with us for a while—that it would drive her out of her senses or kill her."
"So you sent for me?" Martha Jane faltered.
"Yes, because you are the only one she talks about wanting to see. She loves you, and intimated that she would like to go out to your house for a few days. I am sure it will do her good, and I thought maybe you wouldn't mind—"
"Oh, I should love it above all things!" The girl grasped Mrs. Whaley's hands and wrung them eagerly. "I have the buggy. I could take her right back with me."
"Then you ought to do it while her pa is away," Mrs. Whaley said, her beetling brows lowered. "He is in the country to-day. If he was here he might raise a row, but he won't be apt to object when it is already done. I think she ought to go. I hate to say it, but this is no place for her right now. I'm afraid sometimes that her pa's got some trouble of the brain. 'Softening,' some call it. He is not like he was. He wakes up in the dead of night and comes stumbling over things to my bed to talk all this over, and he would go to Tilly's bed, too, if I'd let him. He is even suspicious of me—says I dispute his Bible views behind his back, or when he is expounding them to somebody before me. But I don't. I'm sick and tired of it all. I am coming to see that he is wrong, because religion is intended to help, not ruin folks, and between you and me, Martha Jane, every bit of trouble me and him ever had came out of his peculiar way of looking at Scripture. La me! wouldn't it have been better to have left Tilly down there with the man she picked out than to—to— Well, you know what I mean? You see how it ended."
With moist eyes, Martha Jane nodded. "May I see her now?" she asked, her lips twitching.
"Yes, go right up. She will be glad to see you."
Two days later Joel Eperson and Tilly sat on the veranda of Joel's farm-house. "Martha Jane said you had something to say to me," he said, gravely. "I hope it is something that I can do to help you, Tilly. God knows I want to do so."
"Yes, I want you to help me," Tilly said, lifting her sad eyes to his face, "but first I must make a confession. Joel, I deliberately planned this visit to Martha Jane for a purpose. There was something to be done that would have been impossible at home, owing to my father's close watching over me."