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She was attached to her sister, as to all her immediate relatives and surroundings; and while she utterly disapproved of Diantha's undertaking, a sense of sisterly duty, to say nothing of affection, prompted her to many letters. It did not, however, always make these agreeable reading. "Mother's pretty well, and the girl she's got now does nicely that first one turned out to be a failure.
And to hear him one would suppose that to sound the siren was always a necessary preliminary to starting the wheels. They were off at last. There was a slight indecision, to be sure, whether they would go backward or forward, and there was some hesitation as to whether Diantha's geranium bed or the driveway would make the best thoroughfare.
And then brightening: "When I get old enough to do as I please, I'll make up for it." Persis, studying the rapt young face, made no immediate reply. Her sense of guilty complicity in Diantha's precocious womanhood distracted her attention from the girl's resentful speech. Apparently her silence proved stimulating to Diantha's impulse toward confidences.
To Phineas it could mean but one thing; and he did not change his opinion when he heard Diantha's account of the ride. "It was perfectly lovely," she breathed. "Oh, Phineas, it was jest like flyin'!" "'Flyin'!" Phineas could say no more. He felt as if he were choking, choking with the dust raised by Dolly's plodding hoofs. "An' the trees an' the houses swept by like ghosts," continued Diantha.
Diantha's scanty baggage was all in sight. She looked around for an excuse. Mrs. Weatherstone stood up laughing. "Put the new address in the letter," she said, mischievously, "and come along!" And the purple chauffeur, his disapproving back ineffectual in the darkness, rolled them home.
Diantha did not realize the pathos of her ability to leave her home without a pang. Since tears are only the reverse side of joy, the bride who says farewell to her girlhood dry-eyed is a legitimate object of sympathy. Diantha's unclouded happiness was significant of all that her youth had lacked. But Persis' satisfaction was superficial.
With all due respect to the human will, we must acknowledge ourselves creatures of circumstance in no little degree, when two yards of lawn, retailing at twelve and a half cents, can prove so potent a factor in character and destiny. Diantha's mother might have prescribed quinine had she noted anything unusual in the girl's demeanor.
"Do you know the latest notion mother's got in her head?" "No." "She wants to send me off to school somewhere. She talks to father and talks to him, till I'm afraid she'll tire him into it. Thad West says any woman can get her way if she never stops talking about it." Persis regarded her keenly and Diantha's color rose. For no apparent reason her blush became a conflagration.
"Not at all!" she said gaily. "I'm going to be well to-morrow. You will see!" She went to her room, drew a chair to the wide west window with the far off view and sat herself down to think. Diantha's assured poise, her clear reasoning, her courage, her common sense; and something of tenderness and consecration she discerned also, had touched deep chords in this woman's nature.
A single woman staying alone at a hotel sounds dreadful improper to me. Robert would never allow me to do such a thing, never for a minute. And nobody even knows what she's gone for." But Annabel Sinclair thought she knew. "I shouldn't wonder," she told Diantha, "if when Persis Dale gets back we'd see startling changes." Her confidential tone was balm to Diantha's spirit.
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