That night she cried for a long time, though she could not have told why, and she decided that the very next morning she would ask the Colonel to permit her to return to the city where the boys admired and understood her.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE HEART OF A SNOB
The Colonel glanced anxiously at his young guest the next morning. She had been so bright and animated for days that the good man was beginning to hope that the city girl was becoming acclimated, but again she was looking pale and disinterested. When she had finished her breakfast and had retired to her room, the Colonel called Mrs. Gray into his study and together they had a long talk about Geraldine.
“Poor little girl,” the kind old lady said. “She has never known a mother’s love and I would be glad to help her, but I can’t reach her heart. She treats me courteously, but her attitude says as plainly as words: ‘Mrs. Gray, you are only an upper servant from whom I wish no familiarity.’ I have tried ever since I came to find something which would be the open sesame of this stone barrier which the little girl has raised between us, but I am beginning to think that there is none.”
“Try just once more,” the Colonel said anxiously, “and then, if you do not succeed, I will comply with her father’s suggestion and send her away to a boarding school if she is unhappy here.”
The little old lady went directly to Geraldine’s room and tapped on the door. There was no reply and so she softly entered.
The girl had thrown herself down on the window seat and her shoulders were shaken with sobs. Strangely enough in one hand she held a stocking which she had evidently been attempting to darn.
Truly touched, the kind old lady went toward her and said with infinite tenderness: “Dear, dear little girl! Won’t you tell me why you are unhappy?” She sat beside Geraldine and smoothed her hair.
“Oh, why didn’t my mother live?” was the sobbing reply. “She would have taught me the things that other girls know how to do, and then no one could have called me a pretty dolled-up butterfly.”
Mrs. Grey realized that someone had deeply hurt Geraldine’s pride, but perhaps this was the very cleft in the stone wall for which she had been seeking.