And when things were running smoothly and there were hours too empty for comfort in the lonely day, Joan discovered a professor of music who gave her much encouragement and some good advice.

After this interview she wrote to Doris more frankly than she had done for a long time.  She explained her financial situation and quite simply asked for help: 

     It’s very expensive learning not to be a fool, Aunt Doris.  I have
     proved that.  I am very serious now and Chicago, with Pat, is better
     for me than New York with Sylvia.

What I really want is to prove myself a bit before I come back to you.  I’m sorry about this winter, dear, but a year more and I will be able to come to you not on my shield, I hope, but with it in fairly good condition.

“I think you ought to make her keep her promise about this winter,” Nancy quivered; “she is always upsetting things.”

“Why, my little Nan!” Doris drew the girl to her.  Oddly enough, she felt as if Nancy was all that she was ever to have.  Never before had Joan sounded so determined.

“Instead,” Doris comforted, “I am going to help Joan prove herself and you and I, little girl, will go up to town and have a very happy, a very wonderful winter, and next summer, if Joan does not come to us, we will go to her.  I think we all see things very clearly now.”

Nancy was not so sure of this but she, like Joan and Patricia, had felt the lash upon her back and was chafing at delay.

Mary worked early and late to hasten the departure from The Gap.  Always in Mary’s consciousness was that threatening old woman on Thunder Peak.

With care and comfort old Becky was more alert; more suspicious.  She was wondering why.  And Mary felt that at any time she might defeat what daily was gaining a hold on Mary’s suspicions.  The woman tried hard to shield the secret from her own curiosity, but under all else lay the conviction that it was Nancy’s toys which were in peril.  And gradually the love that the silent, morose woman felt for the girl absorbed all other emotions.  It was like having banked everything on a desired hope she was prepared to defend it.  If her suspicions were true, then all the more must the secret be hid.

And so in November Doris and Nancy went to New York and Mary, apparently unmoved, saw them depart while she counted anew her assumed duties.

There was The Peak—­and with winter to complicate her duties, it loomed ominously.

“And I’ll have to back letters for old Jed.”  Mary had promised to write for the old man and to read from the Bible to him, as Nancy had always done.  “And keep the old man alive as well.”  Mary sighed wearily.  “And when there’s a minute to rest—­keep my own place decent.”  The cabin was the one bright thought and, because of that which had made the cabin possible, Mary bowed her back to her burdens.