Supper was not a cheerful meal. Elizabeth’s voice was thick from crying and she did not talk at all, while John and his mother could not discuss the topic uppermost in their minds in her presence. The feeling that there was a combination of which she was not a part grew upon the young wife, and a longing for Aunt Susan grew with it.
“I’d like to go over to Uncle Nate’s immediately after supper,” she said. “I’ll do the dishes while you hitch up.”
“Good Lord! I don’t want to go over there to-night,” was the reply. “I wish you’d quit calling those people ‘Aunt’ and ‘Uncle’.”
Elizabeth’s face blazed with colour as he got up and went into the sitting room. The brutality of the answer was so evident to John’s mother that she followed him.
“You had better take Elizabeth to Mr. Hornby’s, John. I don’t think you should speak to her in that way, either,” she said in a low tone of voice.
Elizabeth could not hear Mrs. Hunter’s remarks, but John’s reply was audible enough.
“I’m not going over there to-night. I don’t feel as if I ever wanted to go anywhere again.”
She also heard Mrs. Hunter’s low “Sh!” and felt more than ever an alien.
When the dishes were finished Mrs. Hunter went upstairs. John followed her.
“I will not be hurt, because I will not see hurt,” Elizabeth told herself as she slipped through the house to her own room. Because her lips quivered as she said it, she busied herself in taking down her hair to brush for the night. Her sleeves were tight and hindered, and she took off her dress and folded it across the back of a chair carefully, and finished braiding her hair in her petticoat.