this--how to keep the secret, and what to do with it--it would have made
things easier for me, but unhappily that was not feasible. You don't
mean it would have done good instead of harm if I had told you earlier?"

"I doubt it. No, you were right. Brother, there is so much more of you
than any of us thought!"

"So Hartman has found. But I don't want to be unduly exalted. Love is
better than pride, and this trouble of yours has brought us all closer
together, I believe. There is only one thing to be done yet."

"No; two at least. Robert, you deserve to know everything. I will tell
you what we were talking about that wretched day, so that you may see
what excuse there was for him, and how wrong I was. And then you can
tell Jane and Mabel."

"I don't want to know, my dear, nor is there any need to tell them
anything. None of us desire to pry into your affairs, but only to see
them set right. It was plain that something led up to poor Jim's
blunder, and that is enough. You can tell Mabel and Jane what you like
before he comes back,--though they won't ask it.--I will overrule you
for once, as you insist. You want to put a force upon yourself for my
sake, and I will not have it; not another word of that. But--and in this
case I am not overruling, but only suggesting--Jim is waiting all this
time. May I tell him that he can write to you?"

"Not just yet. You have opened my eyes as well as his, Bob; you've
revealed so many masculine virtues that I must take them in by degrees.
You've been keeping yourself in the background and putting him forward,
as if I could be interested in one person only. Now let him wait a day
or two, while I think about you."

There may have been more of these exchanges, which I do not care to
repeat. What goes on in the domestic circle is essentially of a private
nature, too intimate and sacred to be whispered into the general ear.
There are persons who will violate these holy confidences, and tell you
what he said and she said when the doors were shut. I am not like them.
If I appear at times to break my own rule and treat you as a member of
the household, it is merely for your improvement, that you may see (as I
told Jim last summer) how things are arranged in a christian family: and
especially that, when any trouble of this kind invades your own humble
roof, you may know how to slay the lion and extract strength and
sweetness from his carcass, as I have done. Should these pages instruct
but a