Miss
Gaines and I can give two hundred dollars a year between us--fifty
for the church; one hundred and fifty to be added to the minister's
present salary."
I knew what that meant to her, and she must have known I knew, but
she didn't show it by so much as the quiver of an eyelash. Only a
faint, faint color showed in her sallow cheek, and she bowed,
half-formally, half-friendly.
"Thank you, Miss Smith," said she, gallantly. And she added, with a
glimmer of humor in her worried eyes: "As you say you're a business
woman, may I say I hope you will get your money's worth?"
At that I laughed, and she with me.
We walked down our garden path, chatting innocuously and amiably,
until of a sudden they caught sight of the little Love, the gay,
charming, naked little Love, holding his torch above his
curl-crowned head. You miss him, when you come up the broad drive
from the front gate, for Nicholas Jelnik put him in the secretest,
greenest, sweetest spot in all our garden, and you must go down a
winding path to find him.
"So it wasn't an idle tale: they did find it, really!" breathed Miss
Hopkins, staring with all her eyes. And I knew with great certainty
why _she_ had come to Hynds House that afternoon.
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