“Oh, clear out, Eliza,” stormed Bates; “you’ve given us enough of that drivel, now hook it! Hear me?”
Miss Gurney stared at him. “Your companionship with this young woman has corrupted your good manners,” she began, quite undeterred by his wrath.
Whereupon Bates took her firmly by the shoulder, spun her round, and said, “Go!” in such a tone that she fairly scurried away.
“I vanquished her,” he said, a little ruefully, “but I’m afraid it’s a frying pan and fire arrangement. She’ll tell Aunt Letitia, and either aunt or Eliza herself will go at once to your mother with the tale,——”
“Well, I’d really rather they’d be told. I had to tell mother,—for truly, Rick, I can’t live in an atmosphere of deceit. I may be a crank or a craven, but much as I love you, I can’t stand keeping it a secret.”
“I know it, dear, and I don’t like it a bit better than you do, only to tell is to be separated,—at once, and maybe, forever.”
“No!” cried Dorcas, looking at his serious face. “Not forever!”
“Yes; even you don’t realize the lengths to which those two women will go. I hate to speak so of your mother, I hate to speak so of my aunt,—but I know they’ll move out of town, one or both, and they’ll go to the ends of the earth to keep us apart.”
“But they’ve always lived near each other,—for years, in the same building.”
“Yes; that was so they could quarrel and annoy and tantalize each other. But now the necessity of separating us two will be their paramount motive, and you’ll see;—they’ll do it!”