CHAPTER XVI
It is a fortnight later, when the post coming in one morning brings to Dora an invitation from our aunts, the Misses Vernon, to go and stay with them for an indefinite period.
These two old ladies—named respectively Aunt Martha and Aunt Priscilla—are maiden sisters of my father's, and are, if possible, more disagreeable than he; so that there is hardly anything—short of committing suicide—we would not do to avoid paying them a visit of any lengthened duration.
Being rich, however, they are powerful, and we have been brought up to understand how inadvisable it would be to offend or annoy them in any way.
Dora receives and reads her letter with an unmoved countenance, saying nothing either for or against the proposition it contains, so that breakfast goes on smoothly. So does luncheon; but an hour afterwards, as I happen to be passing through the hall, I hear high words issuing from the library, with now and then between them a disjointed sob, that I know proceeds from Dora.
An altercation is at all times unpleasant; but in our household it is doubly so, as it has the effect of making the master of it unbearably morose for the remainder of the day or night on which it occurs.
Knowing this, and feeling the roof that covers papa to be, in his present state, unsafe, I steal noiselessly to the hall door and, opening it, find refuge in the outer air.
As evening falls, however, I am warned of the approach of dinner-hour, and, returning to the house, am safely up the stairs, when Billy comes to meet me, his face full of indignant information.
"It is a beastly shame," he says, in a subdued whisper, "and I would not submit to it if I were you. When luncheon was over, Dora went to papa and told him she would not go to Aunt Martha; and when papa raged and insisted, she began to blubber as usual, and said if you were to take her place it would do just as well; and of course papa jumped at the idea, knowing it would be disagreeable, and says you shall go."
"What!" cry I, furious at this new piece of injustice. "I shall, shall I? He'll see!"