Unexpected tears came into Ellen’s eyes.  She stroked the girl’s fair hair.

“Never mind,” she said.  “The Good Man’s got a way of fixing things to suit Himself.  And I guess He knows best.  We do what it’s foreordained we do, after all.”

Mrs. Boyd was sleeping.  Edith went back to her sewing.  She had depended all her life on her mother’s needle, and now that that had failed her she was hastily putting some clothing into repair.  In the kitchen near the stove the suit she meant to be married in was hung to dry, after pressing.  She was quietly happy.

Willy Cameron found her there.  He told her of Mrs. Davis’ death, and then placed the license on the table at her side.

“I think it would be better to-morrow, Edith,” he said.  He glanced down at the needle in her unaccustomed fingers; she seemed very appealing, with her new task and the new light in her eyes.  After all, it was worth while, even if it cost a lifetime, to take a soul out of purgatory.

“I had to tell mother, Willy.”

“That’s all right Did it cheer her any?”

“Wonderfully.  She’s asleep now.”

He went up to his room, and for some time she heard him moving about.  Then she heard the scraping of his chair as he drew it to his desk, and vaguely wondered.  When he came down he had a sealed envelope in his hand.

“I am going out, Edith,” he said.  “I shall be late getting back, and—­I am going to ask you to do something for me.”

She loved doing things for him.  She flushed slightly.

“If I am not back here by two o’clock to-night,” he said, “I want you to open that letter and read it.  Then go to the nearest telephone, and call up the number I’ve written down.  Ask for the man whose name is given, and read him the message.”

“Willy!” she gasped.  “You are doing something dangerous!”

“What I really expect,” he said, smiling down at her, “is to be back, feeling more or less of a fool, by eleven o’clock.  I’m providing against an emergency that will almost surely never happen, and I am depending on the most trustworthy person I know.”

Very soon after that he went away.  She sat for some time after he had gone, fingering the blank white envelope and wondering, a little frightened but very proud of his trust.

Dan came in and went up the stairs.  That reminded her of the dinner, and she sat down in the kitchen with a pan of potatoes on her knee.  As she pared them she sang.  She was still singing when Ellen came back.

Something had happened to Ellen.  She stood in the kitchen, her hat still on, drawing her cotton gloves through her fingers and staring at Edith without seeing her.

“You’re not sick, are you, Ellen?”

Ellen put down her gloves and slowly took off her hat, still with the absorbed eyes of a sleep-walker.

“I’m not sick,” she said at last.  “I’ve had bad news.”