Lorings were very much astonished to have Sister Sue tell them she was going back to Gilmoreville right away. They were more astonished when she told them that she had decided, after all, not to go on with her music just at present.
Mr. Loring only smiled and said a polite something that meant nothing, and let the matter pass. But Mrs. Loring was not so easily satisfied. She seized the first opportunity, when they were alone together, to induce the girl to tell her more about it.
"Did that horrid man say bad things to you?" she began.
"Why, no indeed! Not a thing," laughed Sister Sue.
"But you played to him?"
"Yes, oh, yes. And he was perfectly lovely to me and seemed so interested! But another pupil had already come and so he asked me to wait till after she had gone. Then he would talk to me. But I did n't wait."
"You did n't wait?"
"Not till he came out, no. I—I got to thinking. May is going to need me very much this summer. And Gordon, too, really needs me. I think I'll go to them."
"And keep on sacrificing yourself! Oh, yes, of course!" commented Mrs. Loring with rising indignation.
Sister Sue laughed again. Then suddenly her eyes grew luminous. A deeper color came to her face.
"Somebody once, that I heard, called it opportunity, not sacrifice. Don't you think it would be lovely if we could think of it like that, Mrs. Loring?" she asked, a little shyly.
"'Opportunity'! Humph!" fumed Mrs. Loring, although plainly softening against her will. "Well, you've found your 'opportunity,' all right!"
Sister Sue only smiled and shook her head. But there was still in her eyes the wondrous glow as she hurried away to do her packing.
Just as Sister Sue was leaving the house the next morning the mail came and there were two letters for her. One from May—the other from Gordon. Slipping them unopened into her bag, she left them to be read when she should get all established in her seat on the train. But though unread they were not forgotten. All the way to the station they lay, as if lead, in her bag and on her mind.
"If only they had n't come to-day!" she sighed to herself. "Oh, I hate so to read them to-day, when—after all—I'm going back—to them."
She knew what was in them, of course. They were the first letters she had received since she had written her brother and sister declining to accept a home with them, and telling them she was going to Boston to take up her long-neglected music again. She could imagine just about what each would say.
Gordon's letter would be short and crisp and cutting. His opinion would be expressed energetically, and when she had read his letter there would be no doubt in her mind as to his opinion of her and her "crazy notion" as she knew he would call it. There would, too, probably be a caustic statement to the effect that of course that would n't count with her any more than they themselves, or their wishes, counted, or the fact that they had offered her a home with them—the best they had. This would be Gordon's letter.
May's letter would be longer. It would tell of Martin's continued ill-luck with "Blixie," and of Martia's fretfulness and exactingness. It would tell of her own ill feelings and despondency and of the extra amount of hard work she had to do now that they had moved out of the city, when really by good rights she should be in bed with a nurse to wait upon her. At the end, perhaps as a P.S., she would say, plaintively, that she was sure she hoped Sister Sue would have a pleasant time enjoying herself in Boston—if she could enjoy herself when all the time she would know that her only sister was simply pining away for the want of the strength and comfort and courage that her dear Sister Sue's presence would give her. This would be May's letter. And Sister Sue wanted to read it only a degree less than she wanted to read Gordon's.
"If only they hadn't come to-day!" she sighed again and again to herself. "If only I could have written to them that I was going to them, first to one, then to the other, before their letters to me came—scolding and complaining and blaming me—it would have been easier. But now—"
Steeling herself for the inevitable, however, Sister Sue resolutely took the letters from her bag. Holding them in her hands, she hesitated. Should she read Gordon's, or May's, first? Did she prefer to be smartly slapped, or to be pricked with countless little pin-thrusts first? After all, a slap was benumbing—in a way. It might dull the hurt of the pricks, she reflected, as with a little shrug she dropped May's letter back into the bag and slipped a hatpin under the flap of the other envelope.