was to the point.

"I wouldn't," she said. "If I had been doin' what you two have been up
to, pretendin' to care for a young girl and offerin' to give her a home,
and all the time doin' it just because I thought I could squeeze money
out of her, I shouldn't trouble the Lord much. I wouldn't take the risk
of callin' His attention to me."

CHAPTER XVIII

In Which the Pilgrimage Ends Where It Began

We did not go to Mayberry that day. We went to London and to the hotel;
not Bancroft's, but the hotel where Hephzy and I had stayed the previous
night. It was Frances' wish that we should not go to Bancroft's.

"I don't think that I could go there, Kent," she whispered to me, on the
train. "Mr. and Mrs Jameson were very kind, and I liked them so much,
but--but they would ask questions; they wouldn't understand. It would be
hard to make them understand. Don't you see, Kent?"

I saw perfectly. Considering that the Jamesons believed Miss Morley to
be my niece, it would indeed be hard to make them understand. I was not
inclined to try. I had had quite enough of the uncle and niece business.

So we went to the other hotel and if the clerk was surprised to see us
again so soon he said nothing about it. Perhaps he was not surprised. It
must take a good deal to surprise a hotel clerk.

On the train, in our compartment--a first-class compartment, you may be
sure; I would have hired the whole train if it had been necessary; there
was nothing too good or too expensive for us that afternoon--on the
train, discussing the ride to London, Hephzy did most of the talking.
I was too happy to talk much and Frances, sitting in her corner and
pretending to look out of the window, was silent also. I should have
been fearful that she was not happy, that she was already repenting her
rashness in promising to marry the Bayport "quahaug," but occasionally
she looked at me, and, whenever she did, the wireless message our eyes
exchanged, sent that quahaug aloft on a flight through paradise. A
flying clam is an unusual specimen, I admit, but no other quahaug in
this wide, wide world had an excuse like mine for developing wings.

Hephzy did not appear to notice our silence. She chatted and laughed
continuously. We had not told her our secret--the great secret--and if
she suspected it she kept her suspicions to herself. Her chatter was a
curious mixture: triumph over the detached Crippses; joy because, after
all, "Little Frank" had consented t