He said in rather a strained voice, "I shan't be here. The bank's sending me to the new branch." "Oh!" Helen said. "I'm sorry about it. I tried not to seem efficient, but there's something about me--charm, I think. They must have noticed how I talk to the old ladies who don't know how to make out their cheques. So they're sending me, but I don't know that I ought to leave you all." "Of course you must." "I can come home on Saturdays." "Yes. And Notya's better, and John is near. Why shouldn't you go?" "Because your face fell." "It's only that everybody's going. It seems like the end of things." She pictured the house without Rupert and she had a sense of desolation, for no one would whistle on the track at night and make the house warmer and more beautiful with his entrance; there would be no one to look up from his book with unfailing readiness to listen to everything and understand it; no one to say pleasant things which made her happy. "Why," she said, plumbing the depths of loss, "there'll be no one to get up early for!" "Ah, it's Miriam who'll feel that!" he said. "And even Daniel won't come any more. He's tired of Miriam's foolishness." "To tell you a secret, he's in love with some one else. But he has no luck. No wonder! If you could be married to him for ten years before you married him at all--" "I don't know," Helen said thoughtfully. "Those funny men--" She did not finish her thought. "It will be queer without you," and after a pause she added the one word, "lonely." It was strange that Miriam, whom she loved best, should never present herself to Helen's mind as a companion: the sisters, indeed, rarely spoke together except to argue some domestic point, to scold each other, or to tease, yet each was conscious of the other's admiration, though Helen looked on Miriam as a pretty ornament or toy, and Miriam gazed dubiously at what she called the piety of the other. "Yes, lonely," she said, but in her heart she was glad that her payment should be great, and she said loudly, as though she recited her creed: "I wouldn't change anything. I believe in the things that happen." "May they reward you!" he said solemnly. "When will you have to go?" "I'm not sure. Pretty soon. Look here, my dear, you three lone women ought to have a dog to take man's place as your natural protector--and so on." "Have you told Zebedee you are going?" "Yesterday." "Then he will be getting one." "H'm. He seems to be a satisfactory lover." "He is, you know." "Thank God for him."