Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/363

Rh She seemed quite like an old friend. I don’t think that I could have believed Mrs. Silva, except for her.”

“But you had seen her only once before. How could you know that she was telling the truth?”

“Oh, you’d know at once if you should see her, you’d be sure that she was perfectly truthful. Besides, she was once the Pounders’ laundress, and—”

“Well, does that give her a moral certificate?”

“Oh, well, Frances herself admitted that she was a very good woman,—for one of that class—she said. She had to admit that, for Nora did n’t like her finding fault with us for having made Mrs. Moriarty’s acquaintance on the way to Nahant.”

As a result of the Salem visit, Luis Silva called one Sunday at Mr. Barlow’s, and although he would not  accept any direct reward for what he had done to save  Brenda from a bicycle accident, he did permit Mr. Barlow  to give him some legal advice in the matter of a lawsuit  that was pending between him and one of his countrymen,  and he assured Mr. Barlow that this was worth much more  to him than any money.

September, with its shorter days, passed along rather quickly. The reading class went on with more vigor than in the early part of the summer, and for the first time  in her life Brenda found herself taking an interest in  books for some reason besides their mere power of entertaining her.

Thus she became interested in Madame D’Arblay’s Diary, by having first heard Julia read aloud Macaulay’s