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She's being miserable in the drawing-room. Tell her you've broken something!" "I won't," Miriam said. "I've had too much of that, and I'm going to enjoy the unwonted peace. You go, Helen." "Leave her alone," Rupert advised. "You won't cure Notya's unhappiness so easily as that." "When the summer comes " Helen began, cheerfully deceiving herself, and John interrupted. "Summer is here already.
"It is, but some one had to do it." "Don't do it again," said John quickly. She raised her eyebrows, met his glance, and looked away. "I can't get on with my work while you two are gossiping here." "Come home, John. Father's iller. Notya's too much worried to be cross. She had a letter Aren't you interested?"
"Oh, no," she answered pleasantly; "it would not do that." She packed on methodically, and while she feigned absorption in that business her thoughts were swift and troubled, as they were when she was a little girl and, suffering for Notya's sake, wept in the heather.
But she did not intend to forgive Mildred Caniper for a single injury, and even now that she was almost woman she refused her own responsibility. Notya had arranged her life, and the evil of it, at least, should be laid at Notya's door.
"Of course you must." "I can come home on Saturdays." "Yes. And Notya's better, and John is near. Why shouldn't you go?" "Because your face fell." "It's only that everybody's going. It seems like the end of things."
Once more, Helen wandered to the doorway; she always sought the open when she was unhappy and, as she looked over the gathering darkness, she tried not to remember the tone of Notya's words. "It's like pushing me off a wall I'm trying to climb," she thought, "but I mean to climb it." And for the second time within an hour, she gave tongue to her sustaining maxim: "I must just go on."
Brent's milk-cart nearly every day, and we sit in the stuffy schoolroom, and Notya's cross." "You make her cross on purpose," Helen said. "She shouldn't let me," Miriam answered with perspicuity. "But it's so silly to make ugliness. It's wicked. Do be good, and let's try to enjoy the lessons and get them over." But Miriam was not to be influenced by these wise counsels.
"There's been a telegram and Notya's going to Italy." "Ah!" Miriam said, but her bright looks faded when Helen added, "With Uncle Alfred." Miriam dropped her head and thrust her doubled fists under her chin, in the angry movement of her childhood. "Oh, isn't that just my luck!" she muttered fiercely. "I I hadn't done with Uncle Alfred." "Perhaps father hasn't done with life," Helen remarked.
"Perhaps he missed me," he added with resignation. He was a tall young man with large hands and feet, and his eyes were vague behind his spectacles. "I thought he would be here. Is everybody out?" "Notya's away, you know." "He told me." "And John and Miriam I don't know where they are." He found it difficult to talk to Helen, and as he sat down in the armchair he searched his mind for a remark.
With a broken word of farewell and thanks she quickly left him. "I didn't like that," she said emphatically to the broad freedom of the moor. George's interest was like the hollow: it hemmed her in and made her hot, but here the wide winds swept over her with a cleansing cold. Nevertheless, when she went to Notya's room, she took the opportunity of scanning herself in the glass.
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