"How, help? It's very difficult to help people," said Louise, wisely. "Especially when they're not able to help themselves. Poor Sue! I don't know what she will do. If Jack Wilmington—but he never really cared for her, and now I don't believe she cares for him. No, it couldn't be."
"No; the idea of love would be sickening to her now."
Louise opened her eyes. "Why, I don't know what you mean, Matt. If she still cared for him, I can't imagine any time when she would rather know that he cared for her."
"But her pride—wouldn't she feel that she couldn't meet him on equal terms—"
"Oh, pride! Stuff! Do you suppose that a girl who really cared for a person would think of the terms she met them on? When it comes to such a thing as that there is no pride; and proud girls and meek girls are just alike—like cats in the dark."
"Do you think so?" asked Matt; the sunny glisten, which had been wanting to them before, came into his eyes.
"I know so," said Louise. "Why, do you think that Jack Wilmington still—"
"No; no. I was just wondering. I think I shall run down to Boston to-morrow, and see father—Or, no! Mother won't be back till to-morrow evening. Well, I will talk with you, at dinner, about it."
Matt went off to his mowing, and Louise heard the cackle of his machine before she reached the camp with Maxwell's letters.
"Don't get up!" she called to him, when he lifted himself with one arm at the stir of her gown over the pine-needles. "Merely two letters that I thought perhaps you might want to see at once."