CHAPTER XX.
CHRISTINA’S TRICKS.
Polly Pennington was standing looking out on the falling rain.
The girl’s face wore its habitual expression of sorrow and anxiety, but there was some deeper emotion than usual written in her eyes.
Behind her, in a large easy-chair, sat her mother, and Mrs. Pennington’s worn face had a flush on it, a flush and a look that was akin to anger.
“I confess I do not understand you, Polly,” she was saying, and her tone was fretful in the extreme. “No one has been more severe than you have been on the faults of others. When you have been so pleased, you have accused your sisters of great lack of consideration, of selfishness and many other disagreeable things; and now, when it is your turn to act differently, you take an attitude which I am sure neither Christina nor Winifred would have adopted. I am both surprised and hurt with you!”
Tears came creeping up to Polly’s large eyes, blotting out the scene from the window.
She said nothing, and after an imperceptible pause, her mother went on speaking.
“It is quite the best and most natural thing in the world that your widowed sister should desire to come to her old home in this her hour of trouble. There can be no argument to urge against this.”
Polly frowned.
Of all things in the world she hated hypocrisy and crooked dealing, and with the full knowledge of Christina’s character now given her, she could not but feel that some ulterior reason lay behind her sister’s desire to share her mother’s home for a time.