[CHAPTER VI]
WHAT WOULD BE SAID?
"WELL, I never!" uttered Miss Perkins as Jessie stepped in. "So that's what you call just going across the road, is it?"
Jessie had not the faintest recollection of any such words as coming from herself; but she seemed to have lived through a small lifetime of feeling since last crossing the threshold, and memory was confused.
"I couldn't help it," she made answer meekly.
Miss Perkins still sat in the self-same chair where Jessie had seen her last, with the self-same piece of work in her hands, exactly as if she had been glued there throughout the time of Jessie's absence. Only her sewing had made scant advance; and a bonnet and shawl lay near, where they had not been earlier.
Jessie observed neither fact, being painfully conscious of the scrutiny which she was herself undergoing. The colour in her face came and went. Miss Perkins gave vent to a sniff, which Jessie supposed to intimate displeasure, though possibly it may have meant concern.
"I couldn't help myself, aunt Barbara—I mean partly. Mrs. Groates asked me to stay with Mimy."
"Oh, it's the Groateses, is it?" with unmitigated disdain. "I might have guessed you were after the Groateses. And how ever came you to see Mrs. Groates at all, I wonder?"
Jessie dropped upon a chair, with her back to the window, and murmured, "I went there."