“She said, ‘Did they send any word to me by that gentleman?’ meaning Russell. I questioned Russell on the subject and could not learn that any message had been sent directly to her, and so she declined coming, and when I asked her if she did not feel able to travel so far, she burst out crying, and said: ‘I could endure the journey well enough, though my head aches dreadfully, but they don’t want me there, and I cannot go;’ a decision she persisted in to the last. She seemed a mere child, not more than fifteen, though she said she was seventeen.” “And did you leave her there alone?” Maude asked, her cheeks burning with excitement, for she had detected the spirit of indifference breathing in every word Georgie had said of Edna, and resented it accordingly. Edna had a champion in Maude, and Georgie knew it, and her eyes rested very calmly on the girl as she replied: “I telegraphed to her aunt, a Miss Jerusha Pepper, who lives near Canandaigua, and also to her friends in Chicago, a Mr. and Mrs. John Dana, and before I left Mrs. Dana came, a very plain, but perfectly respectable appearing woman.” “Which means, I suppose, that you do not think she would steal, or pick a man’s pocket, unless sorely pressed,” Maude broke in vehemently. “For goodness’ sake, Georgie, put off that lofty way of talking as if poor Edna was outside the pale of humanity, and her friends barely respectable. I am sorry for her, and I wish she was here, and I want to know if you left her with any one who will be kind to her, and say a comforting word.” “Maude, have you forgotten yourself, that you speak so to Georgie in Mrs. Churchill’s and my presence?” Mrs. Burton said reprovingly, while Mrs. Churchill looked bewildered, as if she hardly knew what it was all about, or for whom Maude was doing battle. In no wise disconcerted, Georgie continued in the same cool strain: “This Mrs. Dana I told you of, seemed very kind to her, and I think the girl felt better with her than she would with us. She was going to Chicago with Mrs. Dana, and Jack was going with them. You remember Jack?” Yes, Maude did remember Jack, the great, big-hearted fellow, who had been at Oakwood for a few weeks, two years before, and whom Georgie had kept in the background as much as possible, notwithstanding that she petted and caressed, and made much of him, and called him “Jackey” and “dear Jack,” when none but the family were present to see him and know he was her half-brother. “So good in Georgie, and shows such an admirable principle in her not to be ashamed of that great good-natured bear of a fellow,” Mrs. Burton had said to Maude; and Maude, remembering the times when the “great, good-natured bear of a fellow” had been introduced to any of Georgie’s fashionable friends who chanced to stumble upon him, simply as “Mr. Heyford,” and not as “my brother,” had her own opinion upon that subject as upon many others.