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Then she said: “What does it matter? Nobody’s going to eat me.” And she rang the bell.

G. G.’s mother was at home. She was alone. She was sitting in G. G.’s father’s library, where she always did sit when she was alone. It was where she kept most of her pictures of G. G.’s father and of G. G., though she had others in her bedroom; and in her dressing-room she had a dapple-gray horse of wood that G. G. had galloped about on when he was little. She had a sweet face, full of courage and affection. And everything in her house was fresh and pretty, though there wasn’t anything that could have cost very much. G. G.’s father was a lawyer. He was more interested in leaving a stainless name behind him than a pot of money. And, somehow, fruit doesn’t tumble off your neighbor’s tree and fall into your own lap–unless you climb the tree when nobody is looking and give the tree a sound shaking. I might have said of G. G., in the very beginning, that he was born of poor and honest parents. It would have saved all this explanation.

G. G.’s mother didn’t make things hard for Cynthia. One glance was enough to tell her that dropping into the little library out of the blue sky was not a pretty girl but a blessed angel–not a rich man’s daughter but a treasure. It wasn’t enough to give one hand to such a maiden. G. G.’s mother gave her two. But she didn’t kiss her. She felt things too deeply to kiss easily.

“I’ve come to talk about G. G.,” said Cynthia. “I couldn’t help it. I think he’s the dearest boy!”

She finished quite breathless–and if there had been any Jacqueminot roses present they might have hung their lovely heads in shame and left the room.

“G. G. has shown me pictures of you,” said his mother. “And once, when we thought we were going to lose him, he used his last strength to write to you. I mailed the letter. That is a long time ago. Nearly two years.

“And I didn’t know that he’d been ill in all that time,” said Cynthia; “he never told me.”

“He would have cut off his hand sooner than make you anxious. That was why he would write his daily letter to you. That one must have been almost as hard to write as cutting off a hand.”

“He writes to me every day,” said Cynthia, “and I write to him; but I haven’t seen him for a year and I don’t feel as if I could stand it much longer. When he gets well we’re going to be married. And if he doesn’t get well pretty soon we’re going to be married anyway.”

“Oh, my dear!” exclaimed G. G.’s mother. “You know that wouldn’t be right!”

“I don’t know,” said Cynthia; “and if anybody thinks I’m going to be tricked out of the man I love by a lot of silly little germs they are very much mistaken!”

“But, my dear,” said G. G.’s mother, “G. G. can’t support a wife–not for a long time anyway. We have nothing to give him. And, of course, he can’t work now–and perhaps can’t for years.”

“I, too,” said Cynthia–with proper pride–“have parents. Mine are rolling in money. Whenever I ask them for anything they always give it to me without question.”

“You have never asked them,” said G. G.’s mother, “for a sick, penniless boy.”

“But I shall,” said Cynthia, “the moment G. G.’s well–and maybe sooner.”

There was a little silence.

Then G. G.’s mother leaned forward and took both of Cynthia’s hands in hers.

“I don’t wonder at him,” she said–“I don’t. I was ever so jealous of you, but I’m not any more. I think you’re the dearest girl!”

“Oh!” cried Cynthia. “I am so glad! But will G. G.’s father like me too?”

“He has never yet failed,” said G. G.’s mother, “to like with his whole heart anything that was stainless and beautiful.”