Elizabeth was quite as busy as usual looking after the interests of her
small kingdom when Evelyn Tripp called that same morning.
"I have come," she said, "to say good-bye." Then in answer to
Elizabeth's look of surprised enquiry, "The Stanfords came home quite
unexpectedly last evening, so I shall return to Dorchester this
afternoon. Mother has already gone; I've just been to the train with
her."
Elizabeth surveyed her friend dubiously. "Perhaps you are not altogether
sorry on the whole," she said, "though the children have behaved
surprisingly well--for them."
"The baby is a dear," agreed Miss Tripp warmly; "but I'm afraid I didn't
succeed very well with Robert. It seems to me the child's finer feelings
have been blunted someway. When I spoke seriously to him about his
unkindness to Carroll the other day, he made up a face at me. 'You can't
whip me,' he said, ''cause you aren't my mother.'
"'Indeed I could whip, or hurt you in some other way, if I chose,' I
told him, 'and if you were a stupid little donkey who wouldn't go, or a
dog who couldn't be made to obey, I should certainly feel like switching
you; but you are a boy, and you are fast growing to be a man. I am
afraid, though, that you are not growing to be a gentleman.'
"'I guess I'm a gentleman, too,' he said rudely. 'My grandfather's a
rich man, an' we're goin' to have all his money when he dies. We ain't
poor like you.'"
"Shocking!" exclaimed Elizabeth; "what did you say to the child?"
"I explained to him what a gentle-man really was; then I told him about
the knights of the Round Table. He is not really a bad child, Elizabeth;
but he will be, if---- I wonder if I might venture to talk plainly to
his mother?"
"You may talk and she will listen, quite without impatience,"
Elizabeth said, with a shrug of her shoulders. "But Marian is
somewhat--opinionated, to put it mildly, and she is very, very sure that
her own way is best. So I'm afraid it wouldn't do any good."
She smiled speculatively as she looked at her friend. It seemed to her
that Evelyn was looking particularly young and pretty. There was a faint
flush of colour in her pale cheeks and her eyes shone girlishly bright
under their curtain of thick brown lashes. A sudden thought crossed
Elizabeth's mind. And without pausing to think, she put it into words.
"Evelyn," she began, her own cheeks glowing, "I want you to stay with us
over night; I really can't let you go off so suddenly, without saying
good-bye to--to Sam, or--anybody," she finished lamely. "You must stay
to dinner, anyway; I insist upon that much, and I will send you to the
station in a cab."
Evelyn shook her head. "It is very good of you, Betty," she said; "but I
really must go this afternoon. Mother will expect me."
"Does--Mr. Hickey know you are going?" demanded Elizabeth, abandoning
her feeble efforts at finesse.
The faint colour in Evelyn's cheeks deepened to a painful scarlet. She
met Elizabeth's questioning gaze bravely.
"No--o," she hesitated; "but----"
She paused, apparently to straighten out with care the fingers of her
shabby little gloves; then she looked up, a spark of defiance in her
blue eyes.
"Elizabeth," she said, "I think I ought to tell you that Mr. Hickey has
asked me to marry him; but I----"
"Oh, Evelyn! How glad I am!"
"I refused him," said Miss Tripp concisely.
"Refused him! but why? Sam thinks him one of the finest men he knows,
kind, good as gold, and very successful in his profession. You would be
so comfortable, Evelyn, and all your problems solved."
Miss Tripp arose. She was looking both defiant and unhappy now, but
prettier withal than Elizabeth had ever seen her.
"I don't want to be _comfortable_, as you call it, Betty," she said
passionately. "I--I want--to be _loved_. If he had even pretended
to--like me, even a little. But I--I had told him all about my
perplexities, I'm sure I can't imagine why--except that I pined for
something--sympathy, I thought it was, and he--offered me--money. Think
of it, Elizabeth! And when I refused, he--offered to marry me. He said
he could make me--comfortable!"
Her voice choked a little over the last word. "Of course," she went on,
"I know I'm not young and pretty any more; but--but I--couldn't marry a
man who was just sorry for me, as one would be sorry for a forlorn, lost
ki-kitten!"
"He does love you, Evelyn; I'm sure he does," Elizabeth said
convincingly. "Only he--doesn't know how to say so. If I could only----"
Miss Tripp looked up out of the damp folds of her handkerchief.
"If you should repeat to Mr. Hickey anything I have told you in
confidence, Elizabeth, I think I should die of shame," she quavered.
"Promise me--promise me you won't speak of it to anyone!"
Elizabeth promised at once, with an inward reservation in favour of Sam,
who could, she was sure, bring order out of this sudden and unexpected
chaos in her friend's affairs.
"I am positive that you are mistaken, Evelyn," she repeated, as she
embraced and kissed her friend at parting. "I wish you would change your
mind."
But Evelyn shook her head with the gentle obstinacy which Elizabeth
remembered of old. "I seldom change my mind about anything," she said;
"and in this case I simply couldn't. Good-bye dear, dear Betty; and
thank you a thousand times for all your kindness to me."
She turned to wave a slim hand to Elizabeth, who stood watching her
departure with a curious mingling of exasperation and regret.
A whiff of familiar perfume greeted her upon re-entering the
sitting-room and her eyes fell at once upon Evelyn's muff, which she had
deposited upon the floor beside her chair and quite evidently forgotten.
It was a handsome muff of dark mink, a relic of Evelyn's more fortunate
days. Elizabeth stood caressing it absent-mindedly, wondering how she
could best restore it to its owner without vexatious delay, when her
eyes fell upon Carroll and Doris coming in at the front gate with joyous
hops, skips and jumps indicative of the rapture of release from school.
"Here, dears!" she exclaimed, "Aunty Evelyn has just gone, and she has
left her muff; take it and run after her; then come directly home. Your
lunch will be ready in fifteen minutes."