“She should be punished for leaving you alone among strangers,” said Kate indignantly.

“If I only could learn to mind John,” sighed the little woman.  “He never liked Susette.  But she was the very best maid I ever had.  She was like a loving daughter, until all at once, on the train, among strangers, she flared out at me, and simply raved.  Oh, it was dreadful!”

“And knowing you were subject to these attacks, she did the thing that would precipitate one, and then left you alone among strangers.  How wicked!  How cruel!” said Kate in tense indignation.

“John didn’t want me to come.  But I used to be a teacher, and I came here when this place was mostly woods, with my dear husband.  Then after he died, through the long years of poverty and struggle, I would read of the place and the wonderful meetings, but I could never afford to come.  Then when John began to work and made good so fast I was dizzy half the time with his successes, I didn’t think about the place.  But lately, since I’ve had everything else I could think of, something possessed me to come back here, and take a suite among the women and men who are teaching our young people so wonderfully; and to sail on the lake, and hear the lectures, and dream my youth over again.  I think that was it most of all, to dream my youth over again, to try to relive the past.”

“There now, you have told me all about it,” said Kate, stroking the white forehead in an effort to produce drowsiness, “close your eyes and go to sleep.”

“I haven’t even begun to tell you,” said the woman perversely.  “If I talked all night I couldn’t tell you about John.  How big he is, and how brave he is, and how smart he is, and how he is the equal of any business man in Chicago, and soon, if he keeps on, he will be worth as much as some of them —­ more than any one of his age, who has had a lot of help instead of having his way to make alone, and a sick old mother to support besides.  No, I couldn’t tell you in a week half about John, and he didn’t want me to come.  If I would come, then he wanted me to wait a few days until he finished a deal so he could bring me, but the minute I thought of it I was determined to come; you know how you get.”

“I know how badly you want to do a thing you have set your heart on,” admitted Kate.

“I had gone places with Susette in perfect comfort.  I think the trouble was that she tried from the first to attract John.  About the time we started, he let her see plainly that all he wanted of her was to take care of me; she was pretty and smart, so it made her furious.  She was pampered in everything, as no maid I ever had before.  John is young yet, and I think he is very handsome, and he wouldn’t pay any attention to her.  You see when other boys were going to school and getting acquainted with girls by association, even when he was a little bit of a fellow in knee breeches, I had to let him sell papers, and then he got into a shop, and he invented a little thing, and then a bigger, and bigger yet, and then he went into stocks and things, and he doesn’t know anything about girls, only about sick old women like me.  He never saw what Susette was up to.  You do believe that I wasn’t ugly to her, don’t you?”