my folks wanted me to. I've paid for it since.
Roscoe," earnestly, "Roscoe, if you care for anybody and she cares for
you, don't let anything keep you apart. If she's worth a million or
fifty cents that don't make any difference. It shouldn't be a matter
of her folks or your folks or money or pride or anything else. It's a
matter for just you and her. And if you love each other, that's enough.
I tell you so, and I know."

I was more astonished than ever. I could scarcely believe that this was
the dry, practical Dorinda Rogers who had kept house for Mother and me
all these years. And with my astonishment were other feelings, feelings
which warned me that I had better make my escape before I was trapped
into betraying that which, all the way home from Mackerel Island, I
had been swearing no one should ever know. I would not even admit it to
myself, much less to anyone else.

I did not look at Dorinda, and my answer to her long speech was as
indifferent and careless as I could make it.

"Thank you, Dorinda," I said. "I'll remember your advice, if I ever need
it, which isn't likely. Now I must go to my room and change my clothes.
These are too badly wrinkled to be becoming."

When I came down, after an absence of half an hour, she was sitting by
the window, sewing.

"Comfort's waitin' to see you, Roscoe," she said. "I've told her all
about it."

"YOU'VE told her--what?" I demanded, in amazement.

"About your sellin' the Lane and losin' your job, and so on. Don't look
at me like that. 'Twas the only common-sense thing to do. She'd heard
old Leather-Lungs whoopin' out there in the kitchen and she'd heard you
and me talkin' here in the dinin'-room. I hoped she was asleep, but she
wan't. After you went upstairs she called for me and wanted to know
the whole story. I told her what I knew of it. Now you can tell her the
rest. She takes it just as I knew she would. You done it and so it's all
right."

"Roscoe, is that you?"

It was Mother calling me. I went into the darkened room and sat down
beside the bed.

She and I had much to say to each other. This time I kept back nothing,
except my reason for selling the land. I told her frankly that that
reason was a secret, and that it must remain a secret, even from her.

"I hate to say that to you, Mother," I told her. "You don't know how I
hate it. I would tell you if I could."

She pressed my hand. "I know you would, Roscoe," she said. "I am quite
content not to know.