"The
Knitting School is really to be started. Mrs. Bodewin Ranger guarantees
the funds for a year, and we have contracts for work to be delivered in
the fall that will keep from a dozen to twenty girls busy all summer;
while the matron's salary will put Melissa Blake on her feet very
nicely. It's such a relief to have some of those girls provided for."
"That's the Melissa Blake, isn't it," Helen asked, "that Mr. Hubbard
spoke of at dinner?"
"Yes," answered Edith, "but it is impossible that he should be right."
Helen replied only by that look of general sympathy which does duty as
an answer when one has no possible interest in the subject under
discussion, but Mr. Candish, who knew Melissa, shook his head with an
air of conviction.
"No," he observed, "Miss Blake has too much principle to be guilty of a
breach of confidence. I am sure Mr. Hubbard must be mistaken."
"And yet," commented Helen, "there is such a general feeling that if
one keeps the letter of his word he may do as he pleases about the
spirit, that she may have contrived to give her lover a hint without
actually breaking her promise as she would understand it."
"I don't know," Edith returned earnestly, "that we have any right to
judge other people more harshly than we should ourselves. If one of our
friends had betrayed Mr. Hubbard's plans we should say he was a rascal
because we should assume that he knew what he was doing; and we
wouldn't believe such a charge unless we knew he was really bad.
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