'Not yet.

I must get over this first.

They'd see and smell and feel the prison taint on me, if I went now, and I couldn't look them in the face and hide the truth.

I can't lose Ted's love, Mother Bhaer's confidence, and the respect of the girls, for they did respect my strength, anyway; but now they wouldn't touch me.' And poor Dan looked with a shudder at the brown fist he clenched involuntarily as he remembered what it had done since a certain little white hand had laid in it confidingly.

'I'll make 'em proud of me yet; and no one shall ever know of this awful year.