“I wish we knew what has happened to sadden our Rilla,” Catherine Lambert said when, the set having been finished, the girls sat on a bench to rest.
“She came back to school after the Christmas holidays so joyous that I thought some wonderful thing had happened like a romance or——”
“A romance and Muriel not yet eighteen years of age!” This protestingly from Faith. But Catherine, heeding not the interruption, continued: “But that could not have been it, for now she seems very sad. I should think that you two girls who are so intimate with her might ask what has happened. Surely she is troubled about something.”
“I wish I could _truly_ say that I have noticed no change in Muriel,” Joy remarked, as she looked meditatively toward the orchard; “but I cannot, for she is changed. She studies harder than ever before, if that can possibly be. Miss Gordon told me that she had never known a pupil at High Cliffs to make such progress.”
“I wonder if Miss Gordon knows what is troubling Muriel? I am sure that she would, if anyone did,” Faith said, but Joy shook her head. “No, Miss Gordon does not know, for last week she asked me to come to her apartment at an hour when Muriel was occupied in the music room and she asked me if I had noticed a change in Rilla, and if so, had I any idea what had occasioned it. I said that we all realized that Muriel seemed sad, but that we did not know the reason. Then Miss Gordon declared that she would write Doctor Winslow, who has been in the South for a month with a patient, and ask him what he thought might be troubling his ward. If this source of possible information fails, Miss Gordon will ask Rilla herself.”
While these three friends were discussing Muriel as they sat out by the tennis court, that maiden was seated alone beneath the little pine tree that had been her comforter in those first lonely days before she had become acquainted at High Cliffs. In her hand she held a letter and there were unshed tears in her eyes. Although her Uncle Barney’s name was signed at the close of the missive, Muriel knew that Molly had penned it for him.
“Dearie,” the girl read, “there’s no news yet, though it does seem like there ought to be. Here ’tis May and the letter we wrote was sent last December. Folks do say, ‘no news is good news,’ but I reckon this time, colleen, ’tisn’t so. If your father was living he’d have sent some sort of an answer. It would be going against nature not to.