Once outside, Miss Parrott turned suddenly.
"We'll go back to the garden," she said.
This pleased Rachel very much, and she forgot her distress and
mortification, and actually smiled up into the old face.
"Your hand's shaking," she announced, turning her gaze to the long, slender
fingers covering her own little brown palm.
"Is it?" said Miss Parrott absently.
"Yes, it shakes dreadfully," said Rachel, with a critical air.
"Look!"--pointing down at it.
"Oh, that is nothing," began Miss Parrott; then she stopped suddenly and
put both hands on the thin little shoulders. "Oh, child," she said
brokenly, "I did so hope you'd like me, for I've nothing in this world to
live for, Rachel, and now you want to go back to the parsonage."
"Oh, I don't want to go back--I do love you!" cried Rachel, in great alarm,
and she raised her little brown hands and actually smoothed the long,
wrinkled face between them. "Don't look so. you look dreadful," she
pleaded.
For at the touch of those childish hands over her face, Miss Parrott broke
utterly down, all her aristocratic traditions falling away in a second of
time, to reveal her lonely, hopeless life. And she sobbed in a way very
hard for any onlooker to hear. To Rachel, powerless to stop her, it seemed
the most terrible thing in all this world, and she burst out in her misery:
"I'll stay here forever if you'll stop.
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