“If I was in your place I wouldn’t worry about it. I guess Aunt Katharine’s got some sense if she is so cranky. And Esther’s old enough to know what she’s about. Just leave her alone to get sick of some of those notions herself before she’s done with ’em, and you ease up on the fretting. It doesn’t do a bit of good, anyhow.”
She really meant to “ease up.” Tom’s opinion on the last point was distinctly sound, but the old disquiet had possession of her again within five minutes from the time that conversation ended. The letter had come from home—she learned it as she entered the house—giving hearty consent that Esther should remain in New England, and the girl was already off to carry the word to Aunt Katharine. She had said she would be back soon, but no one really expected it, and supper was over before they saw her coming across the fields. Kate, who was watching, saw her first, and slipping out of the house hurried to meet her.
She had brought happy thoughts from Aunt Katharine’s, happy and serious too, it would seem from the look in her face, and they occupied her so intently that she had almost met her sister before she saw her coming. Then she put out both her hands with an eager greeting.
“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said. “I wanted to talk it over a little by ourselves.” She slipped her arm through Kate’s, and turned back into the darkening fields. “You weren’t surprised at what the letter said, were you? I was sorry you weren’t there when it came; but I had to take it down to Aunt Katharine, for it was partly to her, and I couldn’t wait.”
“No, I wasn’t surprised. I felt sure they’d let you stay,” said Kate, and then she added, “I do hope you’ll have a good time, Esther, and enjoy everything as much as you expect to.”
She had made an effort to speak heartily, but there was such a sober note in her voice that Esther’s face clouded, and she looked quickly at her sister. “If you were only going to be here too, Kate, it would be perfect,” she said. “I shall be wishing all the way along that you were in the good times with me. And if you hadn’t said so positively that you wanted to go home, I should have felt like proposing to Aunt Katharine to cut my time in Boston in two and let us be there together for a little while.”
“I shouldn’t have thanked you for it if you had,” said Kate, a sudden impatience leaping into her voice. Then, with a bitterness she ought to have kept down, she added, “I don’t like Aunt Katharine, and I don’t want her favors.”
The look in Esther’s face changed. “You don’t do Aunt Katharine justice, Kate,” she said. “Nobody does here. She isn’t hateful and hard-hearted, as you all seem to think. She’s good and kind and true—oh, so true! I believe she’d do more and give more than any other person I ever saw to bring about what she thinks is right. I don’t know, I’m sure, how she came to like me, but I know why I like her. I admire her and I love her, and there’s nobody in the world I’d rather take a favor from than Aunt Katharine.”
Kate set her teeth hard. She had prejudiced everything she had meant to say by the heat with which she had spoken. She was silent a moment, then she said almost piteously: “I don’t wonder she likes you. But I may as well be honest, Esther; I do hate to see her getting such an influence over you. It’s all well enough to admire her for standing up for her own opinions, but I don’t see how you can fall in with some of them. I don’t see how you can bear it to hear her talk so bitterly against the ways we’ve always been used to. And especially I don’t see how you can stand it to hear her run down the men as she does.”
“I don’t agree with all her opinions,” said Esther, quickly, “but I can see how she comes to hold them, and she doesn’t always talk as harshly as you think. But it isn’t her opinions any way; it’s her own self that I care about.”