Dora was silent. She knew how to treat Sister Cecilia. Jem had taught her that.
"It has been such a terrible blow. His letters to his mother are quite heartbroken."
Dora reserved her opinion of grown-up men who write heartbroken letters to their mothers.
"I know all about it," Sister Cecilia went on, quite regardless of the truth, as some good people are. "Dora, dear, I know all about it."
Silence, a silence which reminded Sister Cecilia of a sense of discomfiture which had more than once been hers in conversation with Jem.
"Have you nothing to tell me, dear?" she inquired. "Nothing to say to me?"
"Nothing," replied Dora pleasantly. "Especially as you know all about it."
"Will you never change your mind?" persuasively.
"No, I am not the sort of person to change my mind."
There was a little pause, and again Sister Cecilia whispered to the evening shades.
"I cannot help hoping that some day it may be different. It is not as if there were any one else--?"
"I dare say," added Sister Cecilia, after waiting in vain for an answer to her implied question, "that I am wrong, but I cannot help being in favour of a little more candour, a little mutual confidence."
"I cannot help feeling," replied Dora quietly, "that we are all best employed when we mind our own business."
"Yes, dear, I know. But it is very hard to stand idly by and see young people make mistakes which can only bring them sorrow. I want to tell you to think very deeply before you elect to lead the life of a single woman. It is a life full of temptation to idleness and self-indulgence. There are many single women who, I am really afraid, are quite useless in the world. They only gossip and pry into their neighbours' affairs and make mischief. It is because they have nothing to do. I have known several women like that, and I cannot help thinking that they would have been happier if they had married. Perhaps they did not have the chance. One does not understand these things."
Sister Cecilia cast her eyes upwards toward the tree-tops to see if perchance the explanation was written there.
"Of course," she went on complacently, drawing down her bonnet-strings, "there are many useful lives of single women. Lives which the world would sadly miss should it please God to take them. Women who live, not for themselves, but for others; who go about the world helping their neighbours with advice and the fruits of their own experience; ever the first to go to the afflicted and to those who are in trouble. They do not receive their reward here, they are not always thanked. The ignorant are sometimes even rude. They have only the knowledge that they are doing good."