“For shame, Carey!”
“Well, Mary, I dare say I am naughty. I do feel naughtier now than ever I did in my life; but I can’t help it! It just makes me mad to be worried or tied down,” and she pushed back her hair so that her unfortunate cap was only withheld from tumbling entirely off by the pin that held it.
“Oh, that wretched cap!” she cried, jumping up, petulantly, and going to the glass to set it to rights, but with so hasty a hand that the pin became entangled in her hair, and it needed Mary’s quiet hand to set it to rights; “it’s just an emblem of all the rest of it; I wouldn’t wear it another day, but that I’m afraid of Ellen and Robert, and it perfectly drives me wild. And I know Joe couldn’t have borne to see me in it.” At the Irishism of which she burst out laughing, and laughed herself into the tears that had never come when they were expected of her.
Mary caressed and soothed her, and told her she could well guess it was sadder to her now than even at first.
“Well, it is,” said Carey, looking up. “If one was sent out to sea in a boat, it wouldn’t be near so bad as long as one could see the dear old shore still, as when one had got out—out into the wide open—with nothing at all.”
And she stretched out her hands with a dreary, yearning gesture into the vacant space, such as it went to her friend’s heart to see.
“Ah! but there’s a haven at the end.”
“I suppose there is,” said Carey; “but it’s a long way off, and there’s dying first, and when people want to begin about it, they get so conventional, and if there’s one thing above another that I can’t stand, it is being bored.”
“My poor child!”
“There, don’t be angry with me, because I’m telling you just what I am!”