"Thank you," muttered Joan bitterly.
"Why, it's the most natural thing in the world that a girl wants a house of her own, and a man of her own, and so forth! Only most of 'em ain't honest enough to come out flat and say so.... I'm for you, dearie. You're to have the trip, of course, and anything else you want, just let me know. As if I was really your mother—I mean it!"
"Thank you," said Joan again.
It was not the first time she had been disconcerted to find the enemy fighting her battles. What is to be done with an enemy which will not keep its proper place?
Effie May concerned herself in the preparations for departure with a whole-hearted generosity which occasioned Joan some secret pangs of remorse. As a step-relative she knew that she herself had left much to be desired. In vain the girl protested that she had already too many clothes, too much finery.
"Nonsense! A girl can't have too much finery," was the rejoinder. "Even if you don't get to wear all your pretties, it makes you feel sort of easy, sort of good-as-anybody like, just to know you've got 'em in the closet."
With her own hands she ran ribbons and rearranged trimmings and packed, to the secret jealousy of Ellen, keeping up a constant stream of shrewd comment and advice, some of which Joan found worth remembering.
"The trouble with you is, girlie, you think too much," was one of the pearls that fell from her lips. "Just let go and have a good time, and don't take yourself so hard. You can feel as different as you like inside, just so folks don't know it. Folks are sort of leery of what they aren't used to. See?"
Joan often wondered in what school of experience her step-mother had gleaned her curious wisdom.
Ellen Neal was the only one of the three elders who watched her going with any uneasiness.