"Don't Jean. Don't. Something will turn up. It must."
Jean's lips trembled. "When you say it like that I feel sure myself for a minute. But——"
"Are Tom and Elsie going to stay all summer?"
"Yes. This is the supreme chance of mummy's life to make herself uncomfortable, and she won't lose it."
"Don't, Jeany. I hate you when you're bitter like that."
"I can't help whether you do or not. It's true."
Jean's arm dropped from Pat's shoulder and she stood frowning. "I have never been able to make you understand, but nobody who hasn't lived and breathed and petrified in Christian Duty for years could. It's the wickedest, most hellish misconception the brain of man ever conceived to make this rotten scheme of things rottener. It's done more harm in the world than the Seven Deadly Sins put together. It——"
"Don't, Jean."
"You were brought up where religion was a kind of entrée, but with mummy it's the whole meal from soup to fingerbowls. God lives right in the house with us, and interferes in everything we do. Think of it, Patsy. For thirty years, mummy hasn't eaten a meal she didn't cook herself. That translation I'm going to do for Renshaw would give us a couple of weeks somewhere. And are we going? No. Because Tom Morton, who was some distant relative of father's, who's been dead for eighteen years and whom mummy didn't love when he was alive, chooses to appear from nowhere and dump himself and his fool wife and disgusting baby on us, mummy conceives it her duty to stay all summer cooking for them, and waiting on that idiot Elsie because she's going to have another. It makes my soul shiver, it makes me so mad. And I know what will happen. You talk about my logic. It's mummy who has all the logic in our family. Because she's saddled with these she'll say she might just as well have others, and we'll have every slab-chested old maid who comes to summer-school and wants to get the best food in town for nothing. Mummy will roast all July and August and say they were very nice people as long as they don't turn her out of her own house."
"Can't you make her see that——"