“Oh, my darling child! As if I did not know that!” Mrs. Chadwick moaned and, as Adrienne moved away, she turned as if half distraught to her two friends. “Oh, it’s dreadful! dreadful!” she nearly wept. “Oh, how can he treat her so—before you all! It’s breaking my heart!”
Barbara came running out with the cream. “Great Scott!” she exclaimed, stopping short. “What’s become of everybody?”
“They’ve all gone, dear. Yes, we’ve all finished. No one wants any more strawberries. Take yours away, will you, dear, we want to have a little talk, Aunt Monica, Roger and I.”
“I suppose it’s Barney again,” said Barbara, standing still and gazing indignantly around her. “Where’s Adrienne?”
“She has gone to lie down, dear. Yes. Barney has been very unkind.”
“About my trip, I suppose? He’s been too odious about my trip and it’s only the other day he made Adrienne cry. What possible business is it of Barney’s, I’d like to know? One would think he imagined that wives and sisters were a sort of chattel. Why mayn’t I stay, Mother—if you’re going to talk about my trip? Adrienne has explained everything to me and I think Meg was quite right and I’d do the same myself if I were in her place. So I’m perfectly able to understand.”
“I know, dear; I know; Adrienne is so wonderful. But don’t say things like that, I beg of you, for it makes me very, very unhappy. And please run away for a little while, for we have other things to talk of. I’m afraid there may be no trip at all, Barbara; Meg may be coming home at once. The letters had news about it, and Eric has to go to the war—if there is a war, you see.” Mrs. Chadwick spoke with a supplicatory note very unlike her usual placid if complaining authority.
“But I’d like to hear about the letters, then. Do we really have to give up the trip? I’m sure it’s Barney at the bottom of it. He’s been trying to dish it from the first and I simply won’t stand it from him.”
“It’s not Barney at all, Barbara. You shall hear all that there is to hear. And you mustn’t, really, forget that Barney is your elder brother and has some right to say what you should do—even though we mayn’t agree with him.”
“No, he hasn’t. Not an atom,” Barbara declared. “If anyone has any right, except you, it’s Adrienne, because she’s a bigger, wiser person than any of us.”