Some one has acutely remarked that people who break their usual habits by rising very early in the morning are apt to be a little conceited in the first part of the day and somewhat stupid in the last. There was certainly no lack of self-assurance in Kate Northmore, as she took that walk across the dewy fields, with the fresh air blowing on her face, and the twitter of birds sounding from the woods. Not till she actually stood at Aunt Katharine’s threshold was there any tremor of her nerves or any flutter at her heart.
Miss Saxon herself answered the knock, and a look of something like alarm came into her face as she saw the caller. “Is anybody sick at your house?” she asked quickly.
Kate had not foreseen the question. “No,” she said, taken a little aback. “Nobody’s sick, but I wanted to see you, and I thought I’d come early.”
“I should think so,” ejaculated the old woman, her face relaxing into a grim sort of a smile. “Well, come in and se’ down.”
She had no notion of preparing the way for the announcement of a pressing errand, or of hindering it by any observations of her own, and she took the chair opposite Kate’s with her hands clasped on the top of her cane, waiting in perfect silence for the girl to begin.
Kate’s heart began to thump now, and her mouth felt suddenly dry. “I’m going home in a week,” she said, “and I—I wanted to talk about something with you before I went.” And then suddenly she stopped. There was a queer sort of clutch at her throat, and for a minute she could not go on.
The old woman’s eyebrows bent themselves into a puzzled frown. “Well,” she said at last, “you hain’t favored me with much of your company this summer. If you’ve got any particular reason for coming now, I s’pose you know what ’tis.”
The sharpness of her tone brought Kate back to herself. “Yes’m I do,” she said, “and it’s about Esther. You’ve asked her to stay here and she’s going to do it—no, I don’t want to stay myself,”—she threw in quickly. “I’m ready to go home; but she wants to. She thinks it’s glorious.” And then she stopped again, that unaccountable clutch at the throat coming for a second time.
“And you don’t want her to do it? Is that what you’re driving at?” said Aunt Katharine. She was in no mood now for delays.
“I should just as lief she’d do it as not—I want her to have a good time,” cried Kate, “if—if you only wouldn’t try to make her think as you do about some things.”