Her mother hovered over her with, ‘What is it? Oh! my dear child, you need not be afraid; he is so kind!’
‘I hate people to be kind, that is the very thing,’ said Arthurine,—‘Oh! Miss Elmore, don’t go!—while he is meaning all the time that I have made such a fool of myself! And he is glad, I know he is, he and his hateful, stupid, stolid daughters.’
‘My dear! my dear!’ exclaimed her mother.
‘Well, haven’t they done nothing but thwart me, whatever I wanted to do, and aren’t they triumphing now in this abominable man’s treachery, and my being taken in? I shall go away, and sell the place, and never come back again.’
‘I should think that was the most decided way of confessing a failure,’ said Miss Elmore; and as Mrs. Arthuret was called away by the imperative summons to the butcher, she spoke more freely. ‘Your mother looks terrified at being so routed up again.’
‘Oh, mother will be happy anywhere; and how can I stay with these stick-in-the-mud people, just like what I have read about?’
‘And have gibbeted! Really, Arthurine, I should call them very generous!’
‘It is their thick skins,’ muttered she; ‘at least so the Myttons said; but, indeed, I did not mean to be so personal as it was thought.’
‘But tell me. Why did you not get on with Mesa?’
‘That was a regular take-in. Not to tell one! When I began my German class, she put me out with useless explanations.’