She lived the period over again in her recollection, as she might have lived over one of the plays she had seen. She thought of the Faradays; of her diffidence, of their kindness; of the English governess and the French teacher, neither of whose speech was intelligible to her. She recalled the morning breakfasts; the walks in the Park in the afternoon; her nervous dread of the office; her first mistakes; the patience of the doctor and Mrs. Faraday; the way she had gradually become one of the family circle; the six small children, and especially the little girl Penelope, who had taken a fancy to her from the beginning; the two summers when she had gone to Maine with the family; the bathing, and how strange she had felt coming out on the beach with no shoes on and skirts up to her knees. Then she thought of Penelope's illness; of the sudden attack of pneumonia while Mrs. Faraday was in bed with influenza; of the days and nights of nursing because Penelope cried for her and refused to take her medicine from the trained nurse; of the night when they thought the child was dying, and how she had sat by the bed until the crisis at dawn. Then of the crisis when it came. The quieter breathing; the way the tiny hand fluttered in hers; the band of steel that loosened about her heart; and Mrs. Faraday crying from her bed, "Dorinda, we can never forget what you have done! You must stay with us always!" After that she had grown closer to them. Where else could she go? Nowhere, unless she went back to Pedlar's Mill, and that, she felt, was still impossible. Some day she might go back again. Not yet, but some day, when her hate was as dead as her love. There were moments when she missed Old Farm, vivid moments when she smelt growing things in the Park, when she longed with all her heart for a sight of the April fields and the pear orchard in bloom and the big pine where birds were singing. But the broomsedge she tried to forget. The broomsedge was too much alive. She felt that she hated it because it would make her suffer again. They missed her at home, she knew. Her father had not been well. He was getting old. Every month she sent him half of her salary. They would not have had that much if she had stayed at Pedlar's Mill; and then there was the extra money at Christmas. Last Christmas the doctor had given her a check for fifty dollars, and after Penelope's illness, they had wished to give her more, but she had refused to let them pay her for nursing the child. . . . There was a cow at home now, not the red one of Doctor Greylock's, but a Jersey her father had bought from James Ellgood. Her father's tobacco crop had done well last year, and he had mended some of the fences. When the mortgage came due, she hoped he would be able to meet it. She wondered if life had changed there at all. Rose Emily was dead--that would make a difference to her. And Jason's father, that horrible old man, was actually dying, her mother had written. . . .