“Well, it is rather an advantage than otherwise. I am going to take a walk, Ruth, into the very heart of Broadway. I have had enough of the peace of the country. I want the crack, and crash, and rattle, and grind of wheels, the confused cries, the snatches of talk and laughter, the tread of crowds, the sound of bells, and clocks, and chimes. I long for all the chaotic, unintelligible noise of the streets. How suggestive it is! Yet it never explains itself. It only gives one a full sense of life. Love may need just the same stimulus. I wish grandmother would come home. I should not require Broadway as a stimulus. I am afraid she will be very angry with me, and there will be a battle royal in Gramercy Park.”
It was nearly a week before Ethel had this crisis to meet. She went down to it with a radiant face and charming manner, and her reception was very cordial. Madam would not throw down the glove until the proper moment; besides, there were many very interesting subjects to talk over, and she wanted “to find things out” that would never be told unless tempers were propitious. Added to these reasons was the solid one that she really adored her granddaughter, and was immensely cheered by the very sight of the rosy, smiling countenance lifted to her sitting-room window in passing. She, indeed, pretended to be there in order to get a good light for her new shell pattern, but she was watching for Ethel, and Ethel understood the shell-pattern fiction very well. She had heard something similar often.
“My darling grandmother,” she cried, “I thought you would never come home.”
“It wasn’t my fault, dear. Miss Hillis and an imbecile young doctor made me believe I had a cold. I had no cold. I had nothing at all but what I ought to have. I’ve been made to take all sorts of things, and do all sorts of things that I hate to take and hate to do. For ten days I’ve been kicking my old heels against bedclothes. Yesterday I took things in my own hands.”
“Never mind, Granny dear, it was all a good discipline.”
“Discipline! You impertinent young lady! Discipline for your grandmother! Discipline, indeed! That one word may cost you a thousand dollars, miss.”
“I don’t care if it does, only you must give the thousand dollars to poor Miss Hillis.”
“Poor Miss Hillis has had a most comfortable time with me all summer.”
“I know she has, consequently she will feel her comfortless room and poverty all the more after it. Give her the thousand, Granny. I’m willing.”
“What kind of company have you been keeping, Ethel Rawdon? Who has taught you to squander dollars by the thousand? Discipline! I think you are giving me a little now—a thousand dollars a lesson, it seems—no wonder, after the carryings-on at Rawdon Court.”