“I daresay I shall be in a position some day to pay up all square,” he said.
“And until you can, I do not stay here, father.”
I had great difficulty in keeping my promise of silence. Churton shrugged his shoulders, and asked, “Where are you going?”
“To live with you,” she said.
He looked angry. “This is all nonsense, Maimie.”
“It is not nonsense,” she said calmly. “Father, you must listen to me, if you please. What I want to say is this,—that things cannot go on any longer as they have done. Uncle Robert and Aunt Marion may be willing, but I am not. I can’t go on living in a false position. It must be one thing or the other. Aunt Marion, please hush—just a little longer. I know I am right about this. Father, I mean what I say. If I am Uncle Robert’s child, then I have no more to do with you, any more than with any other mere acquaintance; and the arrangement of the last three years has been fair and right. But if I am your child, I will not live upon anybody else, and I must either live with you, or Uncle Robert must be paid for all my expenses.”
One thing was plain to me, in Churton’s face. He did not wish to give Maimie up. Whether he was jealous of her love for us,—whether he really did feel affection for her,—or whether he had schemes for the future in which he meant her to take a part,—I could not then decide. I have since been convinced that the last was the leading motive. But he did not mean to give her up.
“And suppose I say 'No’ to both?”
“You can’t,” she answered. “I don’t want to speak as I should not; but you are not my real father, and you have not acted a father’s part; and Uncle Robert has rights as well as you. He has been a father to me. I am not going on like this any longer. I will be either his or yours. If I am Uncle’s, I am his altogether, and I stay here. If I am yours, I come to you.”
“To 'The Gables!’ Nonsense!”