“Yes. I thought the lump had begun to be leavened,” returned the girl.
“Talk English, please,” said her mother vivaciously. “Father seemed quite human, and that is all we have ever needed to make things tolerable here. I suppose we reaped the benefit of his relief about the horse.”
“It's all Jewel,” said Eloise, smiling. “That's English, isn't it?”
“Jewel!” Mrs. Evringham exclaimed. “Why, you're all daffy about that child. What is the attraction?”
“That's what I'm trying to find out. It's time for me to go up now and braid her hair and read the lesson.”
Mrs. Evringham regarded her daughter. “Young people are eager for novelty, I know,” she said, “and it would seem as if an interest in a child was an innocent diversion for you at a time when you were growing morbid, but I do think I'm the most unlucky woman in the world! To think that the child should have to be a Christian Scientist, and that you should take this perverse interest in her ideas just now. I haven't spoken of your remarks about the horse last night, but it was in poor taste, to say the least, to mention such nonsense before Dr. Ballard, and apparently do it so seriously. I knew you had been helping Jewel with lessons, but until last evening I didn't suspect that it might all be on that odious subject. Is it, Eloise?”
“Yes, but it isn't odious. I like the fruit of it in her.”
“You've never shown Dr. Ballard your most agreeable side, and now if you're going to parade before him, an Episcopalian and a physician, an interest in this—anarchism, I shan't blame him in the smallest degree if he gives up all thought of you.”
Eloise, the undemonstrative, put an arm around her mother. “Shan't you, really?” she replied wistfully. “If I could only hope that.”
“Do you want to give me nervous prostration?” rejoined Mrs. Evringham sharply. “Eloise,” her voice suddenly breaking, “do you love to torment me?”