Mrs. Benedict folded her ladylike hands upon the pious book, said coldly and calmly: "Then you will go back to him."
"Never. I refuse to live with a man who classes me with the lower animals. I——"
Her mother's stern, calm voice interrupted. "Don't say things you will have to take back. You will return because there is no place else for you."
"Mother! Do you refuse to take me and Winchie? Oh, you don't understand. You—who believe in religion—you couldn't let me——"
"Your father," interrupted her mother in the same cold, placid way, "is not to be made judge again. We shall have to give up this house and retire to the farm. We have nothing but the farm. It will take every cent we can rake and scrape to pay the insurance premiums. The insurance premiums must be paid. The insurance is for your sisters. They have no husbands." And with these few bald statements she stopped, for she knew that under her daughter's youthful idealism there was the solid rock of common sense, that behind her impetuosity there was her father's own instinct for justice.
"The farm," said Courtney, stunned. "The farm." Twenty miles back in the wilderness—a living death—burial alive. "Oh, mother!" And the girl flung herself down beside the old woman and clasped her round the waist. "You shan't go there! I'll go back to Richard and we'll see that you and father and Lal and Ann stay on here."
Her mother was as rigid as the old-fashioned straight-back chair in which she sat. The blood burned brightly in the center of each of her white cheeks, but her voice was distinctly softer as she said: "You will go back. But we accept nothing from anybody."
Courtney hung her head. "Of course not," she said, hurried and confused. "I spoke on impulse."
"You'd better sit in a chair," said Mrs. Benedict. "You are rumpling your dress."
But Courtney was not hurt. She had an instinct why her mother wished her to sit at a distance. "Very well, mother," said she meekly, and obeyed.