In the meantime Grandma Thorndyke was turning Virginia inside out like a stocking, and looking for the seamy side. She carefully avoided asking her about our whereabouts for the last few days, but she scrutinized Virginia's soul and must have found it as white as snow. She found out how old she was, how friendless she was, how--but I rather think not why--Virginia had run away from Buck Gowdy; and all that could be learned about me which could be learned without entering into details of our hiding from the world together all those days alone on the trackless prairie. That subject she avoided, though of course she must have had her own ideas about it. And after that, she came and helped me with the dinner, talking all the time in such a way as to draw me out as to my past. I told her of my life on the canal--and she looked distrustfully at me. I told her of my farm, and of how I got it; and that brought out the story of my long hunt for my mother, and of my finding of her unmarked grave. Of my relations with Virginia she seemed to want no information. By the time our dinner was over--one of my plentiful wholesome meals, with some lettuce and radishes and young onions I had bought the night before--we were chatting together like old friends. "That was a better dinner," said the elder, "than we'd have had at Mr. Smith's." "But Jacob, here," said grandma, "is not a deacon of the church." "That doesn't lessen my enjoyment of the dinner," said the elder. "No," said Grandma Thorndyke dryly, "I suppose not. But now let us talk seriously. This child"--taking Virginia's hand--"is the girl they were searching for back there along the road." "Ah," said the elder. "She had perfectly good reasons for running away," went on Grandma Thorndyke, "and she is not going back to that man. He has no claim upon her. He is not her guardian. He is only the man who married her sister--and as I firmly believe, killed her!" "I wouldn't say that," said the elder. "Now I calculate," said Grandma Thorndyke, "and unless I am corrected I shall so report--and I dare any one to correct me!--that this child"--squeezing Virginia's hand--"had taken refuge at some dwelling along the road, and that this morning--not later than this morning--as Jacob drove along into Waterloo he overtook Virginia walking into town where she was going to seek a position of some kind. So that you two children were together not longer than from seven this morning until just before church. You ought not to travel on the Sabbath!" "No, ma'am," said I; for she was attacking me. "Now we are poor," went on Grandma Thorndyke, "but we never have starved a winter yet; and we want a child like you to comfort us, and to help us--and we mustn't leave you as you are any longer. You must ride on with Mr. Thorndyke and me." This to Virginia--who stretched out her hands to me, and then buried her face in them in Grandma Thorndyke's lap. She was crying so that she did not hear me when I asked: