"I do not think you can expect me to praise you for your gratitude," said Mrs. Hancock.
"No. I don't want praise; I don't deserve it. But I want to go back to father."
Mrs. Hancock's sense of ill-usage, of having her kindness met by black ingratitude, rankled and grew. This was worse, much worse, than the painful case of the housemaid, who suited her so well, going away from her service to be married. Indeed, that misguided creature—the marriage did not turn out very happily, and Mrs. Hancock was sure she didn't wonder—the cause of so many bitter memories, appeared now as a perfect angel in comparison.
"I must say that I cannot consider this a pretty return for all the indulgences I have showered on you," she said. "I have treated you like my own daughter, Elizabeth, with the piano always ready dusted for you, and the most expensive motor always whirling you about the country, wherever you like to go, and the new table for your patience, and never a thing asked of you in return till I suggest that you should keep me company during October, and this you flatly refuse. And what your father will say I don't know, with all his kindness in paying for your tour in Egypt, when we settled between us to let you come with me all up the Nile, at a great deal of expense. And now all you can say is that you don't want to go, and can't explain why. And here was I thinking of ordering books on Egypt from the London library this very afternoon, and even planning going up to London some day this week to make sure of getting places in the sleeping-car to Marseilles. And you can't explain!"
Elizabeth felt suddenly goaded to exasperation at this child's babble of books from the library and tickets for the sleeping-car. It was round such things as these that her aunt's emotions clung like swarming bees around their queen. She felt a wild desire to supply Aunt Julia with something real to think about, something that would really pierce through those coils of comfort-padding that wrapped her up as in eiderdown quilts. At present all that ever reached her was a slight disarrangement, a minute tweaking of one of her quilts. Or if by years of habit they were too firmly tucked round her, it would be something to let her see that others were not so grossly wadded against the world, against reality.
"I will explain if you like," she said quickly, and almost smiled to see Aunt Julia huddling her quilts round her, clutching them with eager fingers, dreading lest they should be taken from her by cruel and inconsiderate hands.
"My dear, you haven't given me your confidence voluntarily," she said in a great hurry, "and I am the last person in the world to ask for confidence when it is not freely given. Dear Edith has always told me everything, but that is no reason why you should——"
"Do you mean that Edith has told you about this?" asked the girl.
"About your inexplicable rejection of all my plans for you, including the patience-table? No, certainly not. That, I imagine, concerns you. My dear Edith would be the last to betray what seems to be a secret——"
Elizabeth broke in again.