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And yet YOU know how I've strained every nerve for years, and worked and worked to get where my children could COULD be with them!" "It didn't pay, did it, Hattie?" "I guess it didn't! They're perfectly horrid every one of them, and I hate them!" "Oh, Hattie, Hattie!" "Well, I do. Look at what they've done to Fred, and Bessie, too! I shan't let HER be with them any more, either.
Only hope it won't be me. I 've had people I 've helped try to do it often enough." She gave a laugh that had just a touch of bitterness in it, for she began to recognise that although she had been on the stage only a short time, she was no longer the all-conquering Hattie Sterling, in the first freshness of her youth. "Oh, I would n't want to push anybody out," Kit expostulated.
"I declined having anything. My head aches." "Then do as I tell you, and you will soon feel relieved. There is a bath-room on this floor. Ring for Hattie, and tell her you want a good hot bath. When you have taken it, lie down and go to sleep. One word before I go. Do try not to be hard on mamma. Poor mamma!
"An' 't wouldn't ha' meant nothin' to ye, if ye had known it. Now, you harken to me! It's my last word. That Flat-Iron Lot stays under this name so long as I'm above ground. When I'm gone, you can do as ye like. Now, I don't want to hurry ye, but I'm goin' down to vote." Hattie rose, abashed and nearly terrified. "Well!" said she vacantly. "Well!"
Here in Hillerton her hundred and two-hundred-dollar dresses looked very grand to her, but she's discovered that there are women who pay five hundred and a thousand, and even more. She feels very cheap and poverty-stricken now, therefore, in her two-hundred-dollar gowns. Poor Hattie! If she only would stop trying to live like somebody else!"
Then she asked another and another, and she kept me talking till I guess I talked 'most a whole half-hour about Grandpa Desmond, Aunt Hattie, Mother, and the house, and what we did, and, oh, a whole lot of things. And here, just two days ago, she was telling me that she wasn't interested in Grandpa Desmond, his home, or his daughter, or anything that was his!
Hattie meant to be valedictorian some day, nor did Miss MacLauren doubt Hattie would be. Rosalie's was a different Field. Hers was strewn with victims; victims whose names were Boys. It was Rosalie's Field, Miss MacLauren, in her heart, longed to enter. But how did Rosalie do it? She raised her eyes and lowered them, and the victims fell. But everyone could not be a Rosalie.
"In that case, pa'son," said he, "I should like to state that it would be my purpose to make over that lot to the town to be held as public land forever." Again the village folk outdid themselves in applause, while Young Nick muttered, "Well, I vum!" beneath his breath, and Hattie replied, antiphonally, "My soul!" These were not the notes of mere surprise.
Aunt Hattie's got a new cook, and she's worse than Olga used to be about not wanting folks messing around, I mean. So Aunt Hattie said right off that we couldn't do it there. I am learning at a Domestic Science School, and Mother is going with me. I didn't mind so much when she said she'd go, too. And, really, it is quite a lot of fun really it is.
But as I came out I met Hattie Bridgeman. She is an old friend of Jennie's and has had a hard, hard life. Her husband is an invalid. Her children are thrown on her for support. As I met her at the door she pressed my hand without speaking. I could see by the trembling lip and the tearful eye, that her heart was full. "I wish I had not come to-night," she said, as we walked along together.
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