"You'll stay here to-night," mother said to Mary. She spoke still in a hard sort of voice, as if she couldn't trust herself.
"O no—only to dinner. I must go home early," Mary said.
Mother didn't press for more. She seemed too down-hearted to care.
"Kitty, you'd best be about your work. You've sat there long enough," says she.
It was the first time in all my life mother had ever spoken to me in that tone—almost as if I was a stranger. Mother wasn't given to showing anger in her manner, as I've said earlier. But then she'd never before found me out in a course of deceit, and she was bitterly disappointed in her Kitty. She and father too—ah, poor father! If I had but been able to look forward, and to see what was coming!
When mother spoke, I got up, and stood still in a dazed way. Mary said, almost whispering—
"Haven't you a word to say to your mother, Kitty?"
But mother broke in, sharp and short—
"No, Mary, I won't have Kitty prompted," said she. "If Kitty don't know what she ought to do, she needn't do it! Saying at somebody's bidding don't mean much. And I don't know either as Kitty's words 'll be worth anything to me ever again," says she. "I did think I could trust her; and I can't."
"Kitty will win her way back to your trust," says Mary.