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“Sara, I never could! He doesn’t love me any longer–he said he hoped he’d never see me again.”

“Didn’t you say the same to him, child? He meant it as little as you did. Don’t let your foolish pride keep you miserable.”

“If Walter won’t come back to me without my asking him he’ll never come, Sara,” I said stubbornly.

Sara didn’t scold or coax any more. She patted my head and kissed me and made me bathe my face and go to bed. Then she tucked me in just as she used to do when I was a little girl.

“Now, don’t cry, dear,” she said, “it will come right yet.”

Somehow, I began to hope it would when Sara thought so, and anyhow it was such a comfort to have talked it all over with her. I slept better than I had for a long time, and it was seven o’clock yesterday morning when I woke to find that it was a dull grey day outside and that Sara was standing by my bed with her hat and jacket on.

“I’m going down to Junction Falls on the 7:30 train to see Mr. Conway about coming to fix the back kitchen floor,” she said, “and I have some other business that may keep me for some time, so don’t be anxious if I’m not back till late. Give the bread a good kneading in an hour’s time and be careful not to bake it too much.”

That was a dismal day. It began to rain soon after Sara left and it just poured. I never saw a soul all day except the milkman, and I was really frantic by night. I never was so glad of anything as when I heard Sara’s step on the verandah. I flew to the front door to let her in–and there was Walter all dripping wet–and his arms were about me and I was crying on the shoulder of his mackintosh.

I only guessed then what I knew later on. Sara had heard from Mrs. Shirley that Walter was going to Marlboro that day without coming back to Atwater. Sara knew that he must change trains at Junction Falls and she went there to meet him. She didn’t know what train he would come on so she went to meet the earliest and had to wait till the last, hanging around the dirty little station at the Falls all day while it poured rain, and she hadn’t a thing to eat except some fancy biscuits she had bought on the train. But Walter came at last on the 7:50 train and there was Sara to pounce on him. He told me afterwards that no angel could have been so beautiful a vision to him as Sara was, standing there on the wet platform with her tweed skirt held up and a streaming umbrella over her head, telling him he must come back to Atwater because Beatrice wanted him to.

But just at the moment of his coming I didn’t care how he had come or who had brought him. I just realized that he was there and that was enough. Sara came in behind him. Walter’s wet arms were about me and I was standing there with my thin-slippered feet in a little pool of water that dripped from his umbrella. But Sara never said a word about colds and dampness. She just smiled, went on into the sitting-room, and shut the door. Sara understood.