Aunt Rachel cast an eye of comprehension upon Eppie’s discomfited visage. “That would be a most inappropriate generosity, my dear Gavan. Eppie comes with us always.”
Gavan still looked at Eppie, who, with downcast eyes, ate swiftly.
“Now I’ll be bound that she has been wheedling you to get her off, Gavan,” said the general, with genial banter. “She is a little rebel to the bone. She knows that it’s no good to rebel, so she put you up to pleading for her”; and, as Gavan protested, “Indeed, indeed, sir, she didn’t,” he still continued, “Oh, Eppie, you baggage, you! Isn’t that it, eh? Didn’t you hope that you could stay with him if he stayed behind?”
“Yes, I did,” Eppie said, without contrition.
“She didn’t tell me so,” said Gavan, full of evident sympathy for Eppie’s wounds under this false accusation.
She repelled his defense with a curt, “I would have, if it would have done any good.”
“Ah, that’s my brave lassie,” laughed the general; but Aunt Rachel ended the unseemly exposure with a decisive, “Be still now, Eppie; we know too well what you feel about this subject. There is nothing brave in such naughtiness.”
Gavan said no more; from Eppie’s unmoved expression he guessed that such reproofs did not cut deep. He joined her after breakfast as she stood in the open doorway, looking out at the squandered glories of the day.
“Do you dislike going to church so much?” he asked her. The friendly bond of his sympathy at the table would have cheered her heart at another time; it could do no more for her now than make frankness easy and a relief.
“I hate it,” she answered.