can't face his friends--and I'm as ashamed as I can be! My own sister!
You must be _crazy_--simply _crazy!_"

It was hard on them. Diantha had faced her own difficulties bravely
enough; and sympathized keenly with her mother, and with Ross; but she
had not quite visualized the mortification of her relatives. She found
tears in her eyes over her mother's letter. Her sister's made her both
sorry and angry--a most disagreeable feeling--as when you step on the
cat on the stairs. Ross's letter she held some time without opening.

She was in her little upstairs room in the evening. She had swept,
scoured, scalded and carbolized it, and the hospitally smell was now
giving way to the soft richness of the outer air. The "hoo! hoo!" of
the little mourning owl came to her ears through the whispering night,
and large moths beat noiselessly against the window screen. She kissed
the letter again, held it tightly to her heart for a moment, and opened
it.

"Dearest: I have your letter with its--somewhat surprising--news. It is
a comfort to know where you are, that you are settled and in no danger.

"I can readily imagine that this is but the preliminary to something
else, as you say so repeatedly; and I can understand also that you are
too wise to tell me all you mean to be beforehand.

"I will be perfectly frank with you, Dear.

"In the first place I love you. I shall love you always, whatever you
do. But I will not disguise from you that this whole business seems to
me unutterably foolish and wrong.