“What time was that?” I asked.

“You know, Teunis,” the tears were falling in her lap now.  “Those days when we were together alone on the wide prairie—­when you took me in and was so good to me—­and saved me from going wild, if not from anything else bad.  I remember that for the first few days, I was not quite easy in my feelings—­I reckon your goodness hadn’t come to me yet; but one day, after you had been away for a while, there in the grove where we stayed so long, you looked so pale and sorry that I began talking to you more intimately, you remember, and we suddenly drew close to each other, and for the first time, I felt so safe, so safe!  Something has come between us lately, Teunis.  I partly know what; and partly I don’t; but something—­”

She stopped in the middle of what she seemed to be saying.  At first I thought she had choked up with grief, but when I looked her in the face, except for her eyes shining very bright, I could not see that she was at all worked up in her feelings.  She spoke quite calmly to some one that passed by.  I was abashed by the thought that she was giving me credit for something I was not entitled to.  She spoke of the day when I was in my heart the meanest:  but how could I explain?  So I said nothing, much, but hummed and hawed, with “I—­” and “Yes, I—­,” and nothing to the point.  Finally, I bogged down, and quit.

“We are very poor,” said she, nodding toward the elder and grandma.  “So, ignorant as I am, I kept a school last summer—­did you know that?”

“Yes,” I said, “I knew about it.  Over in the Hoosier settlement.”

“I ain’t a good teacher,” she said, “only with the little children; but sometimes we shouldn’t have had the necessaries of life, if it hadn’t been for what I earned.  I can’t do too much for them.  They have been father and mother to me, and I shall be a daughter to them.  If—­if they want me to go with—­with—­in circles which I—­I—­don’t care half so much about as for—­for the birds, and flowers—­and the people back in our grove—­and for people who don’t care for me any more—­why, I don’t think I ought to disobey Mrs. Thorndyke.  But I don’t believe as she does—­or did—­about things that have happened to you since—­since we parted and got to be strangers, Teunis.  And neither does any one else, nor she herself any more.  People respect you, Teunis.  I wanted to say that to you, too, before you go away—­maybe forever, Teunis!”

She touched on so many things—­sore things and sacred things—­in this speech, that I only looked at her with tears in my eyes; and she saw them.  It was the only answer I could make, and before she could say any more, the elder and his wife came and took her home.  I had got half-way to Cairo, Illinois, before I worked it out that by “the people back in our grove,” she must have meant me; for the only others there had been that gang of horse-thieves:  and if so she must have meant me when she spoke of “people who don’t care for me any more”—­but it was too late to do anything in the way of correcting this mistake then.  All I could pride myself on was having a good memory as to what she said.  I guess this proves my relationship to that other Dutchman who took so long to build the church.  Remember, though, that he finally built it.