l we both sit down on this sofa together?"

"You sit there," replied Sara. "I don't _want_ to be comfortable. I
couldn't lean back. I'm all on edge."

"Oh, but you mustn't be 'on edge'!"

"I don't tell you that to get sympathy, Mrs. May," said the
school-teacher, "but only because I'd like you to understand before I
begin that I haven't come just to be 'cheeky' and bold. I came because I
felt I must--on somebody's account, if not yours. For myself, I didn't
want to force myself on you. I didn't want it one bit! And now I'm here,
if I could do what I feel most like doing, I'd run away as fast as ever I
could go, without saying one more word."

"You almost frighten me," said Angela, her eyes dark and serious. "Have I
done something dreadful that--that I ought to be warned not to do again,
and you have come to tell me because you think I was once a little kind to
you? Not that I was really kind--for it was nothing at all that I did."

Miss Wilkins, sitting stiff and upright on the smallest, straightest,
least luxurious chair in the pretty room, was silent for an instant, as if
collecting all her forces. "No," she answered at last. "It wouldn't be
fair to say exactly that. And yet you _have_ done something dreadful. Oh,
my goodness, this is even harder to get out than--than I supposed it would
be, for, of course, you'll think it's not my business anyhow. And isn't or
wouldn't be if--if----"

"If--what?" Angela prompted her gently.

Sara Wilkins swallowed a lump in her throat and pressed her lips together.
They were dry and pale. "Well," she broke out, "I'll have to tell you the
truth and not care for my own feelings. They don't matter really. It
wouldn't be my business if I didn't love him myself, dearly--oh, but not
selfishly! And he doesn't dream of it. He never will. And he never thinks
about me except to pity me a little and do kind things because I'm alone
in the world. And that's all I want of him. It is, truly, though I can't
explain very well. I just want him to be happy, and to have made him so.
Because _somebody_ had to act if anything was to be done. And there was
nobody but me."

"Him!" Angela repeated in a whisper. Yet the name was in her mind now, as
always it was in her heart.

"Mr. Hilliard, of course. You see"--desperately--"I'm school-teacher at
Lucky Star City, close to his place. All the land there and the big gusher
were his. When he came back in June I was at Lucky Star, and we were
introduce