"I wonder I never told grandma that Walter was connected with the Bellengers," Jessie thought, as she finished reading this letter, which came to her the night when William, beneath the cherry trees, was whispering words to Ellen which should never have been spoken. "It's probably because I've not been much with her of late, and she never seemed at all interested in him, except indeed, to say that pa ought to get him a situation in a grocery, or something to pay him for saving my life. I wish she wasn't so foolishly proud," and as Jessie read the letter again, she felt glad that her grandmother did not know how nearly Walter Marshall was connected with the man who "was hung, or sent to State prison."
Gradually, too, there arose before her mind the whole array of her city friends, with old Mrs. Reeves and Charlotte at their head, and the idea of having Walter with her in the city the coming winter was not as pleasant as it once had been. Her grandmother might find out who he was; William would tell, perhaps, and she could not bear the thought of seeing him slighted, as he was sure to be if the tide, of which the old lady Reeves was the under-current, should set in against him.
"I've half a mind to go home," she thought, "before anything definite is arranged, and persuade father to secure Walter just as good a situation in some other place where he won't be slighted."
This allusion to her father was a fortunate one, for in her cool moments of reflection there was no one whose judgment Jessie regarded so highly as her father's. He knew Walter,--he respected him, too, and had often spoken with pleasure of the time when he would be with him.
"People dare not laugh if father takes him up," she thought, while something whispered to her that she, too, could, if she would, do much toward helping Walter to the position in society he was fitted to occupy. "I won't go," she said, at last. "I'll stay and see Walter again, at all events, though I do wish Will hadn't told me about his speech, and his father, too. I mean to ask him some time to tell me the exact truth." And having reached this resolution Jessie sat down and wrote to her grandmother that she could not come yet, she was so happy in the country.