The six guardians took their trouble hard. Apart from the emotions that had been precipitated by her developing charms, they loved her dearly as the child they had taken to their hearts and bestowed all their young enthusiasm and energy and tenderness upon. She was the living clay, as Gertrude had said so many years before, that they had molded as nearly as possible to their hearts' desire. They loved her for herself, but one and all they loved her for what they had made of her--an exquisite, lovely young creature, at ease in a world that might so easily have crushed her utterly if they had not intervened for her. They kept up the search unremittingly, following false leads and meeting with heartbreaking discouragements and disappointments. Only Margaret had any sense of peace about her. "I'm sure she's all right," she said; "I feel it. It's hard having her gone, but I'm not afraid for her. She'll work it out better than we could help her to. It's a beautiful thing to be young and strong and free, and she'll get the beauty out of it." "I think perhaps you're right, Margaret," David said. "You almost always are. It's the bread and butter end of the problem that worries me." Margaret smiled at him quaintly. "The Lord provides," she said. "He'll provide for our ewe lamb, I'm sure." "You speak as if you had it on direct authority." "I think perhaps I have," she said gravely. Jimmie and Gertrude grew closer together as the weeks passed, and the strain of their fruitless quest continued. One day Jimmie showed her the letter that Eleanor had written him. "Sweet, isn't she?" he said, as Gertrude returned it to him, smiling through her tears. "She's a darling," Gertrude said fervently. "Did she hurt you so much, Jimmie dear?" "I wanted her," Jimmie answered slowly, "but I think it was because I thought she was mine,--that I could make her mine. When I found she was Peter's,--had been Peter's all the time, the thought somehow cured me. She was dead right, you know. I made it up out of the stuff that dreams are made of. God knows I love her, but--but that personal thing has gone out of it. She's my little lost child,--or my sister. A man wants his own to be his own, Gertrude." "Yes, I know." "My--my real trouble is that I'm at sea again. I thought that I cared,--that I was anchored for good. It's the drifting that plays the deuce with me. If the thought of that sweet child and the grief at her loss can't hold me, what can? What hope is there for me?" "I don't know," Gertrude laughed.