"It is two years or more. He wrote the last letter. I'm a bad correspondent, you know, and as I had no good news to write, I did not think it worth while to bother him. I don't know where he is since he quit being governor." There was a sudden lifting of Ethie's head, a quick arching of her eyebrows, which told that the governor part was news to her. Then she asked, quietly, "Has he been governor?" "Yes, Governor of Iowa; and James' wife lived with him. She was Melinda Jones." "Yes, yes," and Ethie's foot beat the carpet thoughtfully, while her eyes were cast-down, and the great tears gathered slowly in the long-fringed lids, then they fell in perfect showers, and laying her head in Aunt Barbara's lap she sobbed piteously. Perhaps she was thinking of all she had thrown away, and weeping that another had taken the post she would have been so proud to fill. Aunt Barbara did not know, and she kept smoothing the bowed head until it was lifted up again, and the tears were dried in Ethie's eyes, where there was not the same hopeful expression there had been at first when she heard of Richard's hunting for her. Some doubt or fear had crossed her mind, and her hands were folded together in a hopeless kind of way as, at Aunt Barbara's urgent request, she began the story of her wanderings. CHAPTER XXX ETHIE'S STORY "You say you read my letter, auntie; and if you did, you know nearly all that made me go away. I do not remember now just what was in it, but I know it was very concise, and plain, and literal; for I was angry when I wrote it, and would not spare Richard a bit. But, oh! I had been so tired and so wretched. You can't guess half how wretched I was at the farmhouse first, where they were all so different, and where one of the greatest terrors was lest I should get used to it and so be more like them. I mean Richard's mother, auntie. I liked the others--they were kind and good; especially Andy. Oh, Andy! dear old Andy! I have thought of him so much during the last five years, and bad as I am I have prayed every night that he would not forget me.