“Good gracious!” Mrs. Dodge exclaimed. “I can’t see why you’re so sensitive about him when you deliberately broke an engagement with him this very afternoon without a word of explanation.”
“That’s an entirely different matter,” Lily said, primly. “I had to do that.”
“Why did you?”
“Because I couldn’t go with one of ’em without hurting both the others terribly.”
“But why didn’t you make some excuse?”
“Because I couldn’t think of anything I was sure would be satisfactory, or that they mightn’t find out,” Lily explained, seriously; and she added, “I had to put that off.”
“Until when?”
“Until I get time to think it out, Mamma. So you see it didn’t mean I care any less for Price. It only meant I was in a perplexing position.” She rose, facing her mother gravely. “I like him much better than the others, Mamma, and I don’t think it’s considerate of you to speak so unkindly of him.” Here Lily’s lip began to tremble a little. “I think he talks wonderfully, and it’s every word true about Mexico, and I think you and Papa ought to respect my feeling for him.”
“Your father?” Mrs. Dodge cried. “You know perfectly well what your father thinks of him.”
But Lily ignored this interpolation, and continued, “It seems to me it was very unkind of you to sit there just coldly criticizing him in your mind all afternoon when he was doing his best to entertain you. He meant nothing except kindness to you, and you were sitting there all the time coldly crit——”