“I guess your informant was almost too much of an optimist.  Couldn’t you be serious for just a minute?  You know, I feel quite well acquainted with you—­and the others, of course.  But they are different.  And they are ‘permanences’ with Nadine.  That’s the kind of thing they’re fit for.  I don’t worry about them, and I shan’t worry about you, either, if you tell me you have friends or know what you are going to do when you land.”

“I can’t tell you that,” Win answered in a changed tone, as if suddenly she were weary of trying to “frivol.”  “But I have hopes; and I have two letters of introduction and a respectable, recommended boarding-house and a little money left, so I really believe I shall be all right, thank you.  My people thought my wanting to come showed ’my wild spirit,’ so I’m anxious to prove as soon as I can—­not to them any more, but to myself—­that I can live my own life in a new world without coming to grief.”

“Why not prove to them any more?”

“Oh—­because no one is going to care much.  As I said, my native woods are far behind, and most of the trees are cut down.  Not a dryad of the true dryad family left, and this one is practically forgotten already.  Her niche was all grown over with new bark long ago, so it was more than time she ceased to haunt the place.”

“I’m afraid you’ve had a great sorrow,” said Peter.

“It was hardly big enough for that word—­this thing that’s sent me seeking my fortune—­though it began with a sorrow long ago.”

“Some one you loved died?” Peter had a simple, direct way of asking questions that led you on.

“My mother.  When I was fourteen—­not old enough to be of much use to my father and the baby brother.  So my father had to get some one to be a kind of housekeeper and superior nurse.  He’s a clergyman.  I don’t look like a clergyman’s daughter, perhaps—­and he thought I didn’t behave like one, especially after the housekeeper came.  She’s the kind who calls herself ‘a lady housekeeper.’  I don’t know if you have them in America.  She and I had rows—­and that upset father.  He didn’t want to get rid of her because she managed things splendidly—­him and the baby and the vicarage—­and influential old ladies said she ’filled a difficult position satisfactorily.’  So it was simpler to get rid of me.  I went to boarding-school.”

“Did you like that?”

“I loved it.  After the first year I didn’t go home even for the holidays.  Often I visited—­girls were nice to me.  But I didn’t make the most of my time—­I’m furious with myself for that now.  I learned nothing—­nothing, really, except the things I wanted to learn.  And those are always the ones that are least useful.”

“I found that, too,” said Peter, “at Yale.”

“It didn’t matter for you.  You have the Balm of Gilead.”

“That’s my father’s.”

“What’s his is yours, I suppose.”

“He says so.  But—­we all have our own trouble.  Mine’s not living up to my principles, or even knowing exactly what they are—­being all in a turmoil.  But it’s yours I want to talk about.”