“I don’t quite say that,” Mrs. Cromwell returned thoughtfully. “There’s one step I shall certainly be inclined to take. I’m certain these Ealing people would not make desirable members of the club and I——”
“No, no!” Anne cried, in terrified protest. “You mustn’t try to have them blackballed, Mamma. You couldn’t do a single thing about it that Harrison would hear of, because he’s proposed them himself, and he’d insist on knowing where the opposition came from. Don’t you see what he’d think? It would look that way to everybody else, too. Don’t you see, Mamma?”
Mrs. Cromwell was forced to admit her helplessness to help her daughter even by this stroke of warfare. “It’s true, I’m afraid, Anne. But what an outrageous thing it is! We can’t even take measures to protect a good old family institution like the Green Hills club from people who’ll spoil it for us—and all because a silly boy was made sillier by a tricky girl’s telling him she’d dreamed about him!”
“Yes,” Anne said, while new tears sidled down her cheeks;—“he must have been silly all the time. I didn’t think he was—not until this happened—but he must have been, since it could happen.” She put out a hand to her mother’s. “Mamma,” she said, piteously, “why does any one have to care what a silly person does? If he’s silly and I know it, why does it matter to me what he does? Why don’t I get over it?”
And with that, the sobbing she had so manfully withheld could be withheld no longer. Her mother soothed her in a mother’s way, but found nothing to say that could answer the daughter’s question. They had an unhappy half-hour before Anne was able to declare that she was ashamed of herself and apologize for “making such an absurd scene”; but after that she said she was “all right,” and begged her mother to go to bed. Mrs. Cromwell complied, and later, far in the night, came softly to Anne’s door and listened.
Anne’s voice called gently, “Mother?”
The door was unlocked, and Mrs. Cromwell went in. “Dearest, I’ve been thinking. You and I might take a trip somewhere abroad perhaps. Would you like to?”
“We can’t. We can’t even do that. Don’t you see if we went now it would look as if I couldn’t stand it to stay here? We can’t do anything, Mother!”
Mrs. Cromwell bent over the bed. “Anne, this isn’t serious, dear. It will pass, and you’ll forget it.”
“No. I think I must have idealized men, Mother. I believe I thought in my heart that they’re wiser than we are. Are they all such fools, Mother? That’s what I can’t get over. If you were in my place and Papa not engaged to you yet, and he saw Sallie Ealing and she tried for him—oh, Mamma, do you think that even Papa——”