e rose to go early, and
the circle broke when she left it. She and Jeanette left John standing
with his arms about his mother, patting her back while she wept.

As she closed the door of Jeanette's room behind her, Molly Brownwell
knew that she must speak. "Jeanette," she said, "I don't know just how
to say it, dear; but, I stole those--I mean what is in that
package--I took it and Neal doesn't know I have it. It's for you,"
she cried, as she broke the string that tied it, and tore off the
wrapping.

The girl stared at her and asked: "Why, Aunt Molly--what is it? I
don't understand."

The woman in pulling her wrap from the chair, tumbled the letters to
the floor. She slipped into her cloak and kissed the bewildered girl,
and said as she stood in the doorway: "There they are, my dear--they
are yours; do what you please with them."

She hurried down the stairs, and finding John sitting alone before the
fire in the sitting room, would have bidden him good night as she
passed through the room, but he stopped her.

"There is one thing more, Molly," he said, as he motioned to a chair.

"Yes," she answered, "I wondered if you had forgotten it!"

He worried the fire, and renewed the blaze, before he spoke. "What
about Neal--how does he feel?"

"John," replied the woman, turning upon him a radiant face, "it is the
most beautiful thing in the world--that boy's love for Jennie! Why,
every night after his work is done, sitting there in the office alone,
Neal writes her a letter, that he never mails; just takes his heart to
her, John. I found a great stack of them in his desk the other day."

Barclay's face crinkled in a spasm of pain, and he exclaimed, "Poor
little kids--poor, poor children."

"John--" Molly Brown well hesitated, and then took courage and cried:
"Won't you--won't you for Ellen's sake? It is like that--like you
and Ellen. And," she stammered, "oh, John, I do want to see one such
love affair end happily before I die."

Barclay's hard jaw trembled, and his eyes were wet as he rose and
limped across the great room. At the foot of the stairs he called up,
"Don't bother with the phone, Jeanette, I'm going to use it." He
explained, "The branch in her room rings when we use this one," and
then asked, "Do you know where he is--at home or at the office?"

"If the ten o'clock train is in, he's at the office. If not, he's not
in town."

But Barclay went to the hall, and when he returned he said, "Well, I
got h