“I’m sorry you feel like that, George,” she said, gravely. “Because, you see, I couldn’t stay here unless it could be that way.”
“Suit yourself!” he answered, briefly.
But he regretted the words as soon as they were spoken.
“I only meant—” he began, but when he turned he found her gone, vanished in her own quick, quiet way. He hurried into the house to find her, and looked for her everywhere, but in vain.
And it seemed to him that he could not go off to the city with this new burden upon his conscience. It was bad enough that he should have hurt his mother the evening before; bad enough to endure the other harassments that had tried him so sorely, for so long, without this new misery. He thought of his aunt’s sprightliness; her gay and touching friendliness toward him; he remembered how grave her face had become.
“She might have known I didn’t mean that,” he thought, dismayed. “I don’t like her, and she’ll be a bore and a nuisance; but I didn’t mean to offend her.”
And all the time he was perfectly aware that she wasn’t “offended,” any more than a clover blossom is offended if you tread it underfoot. It was he who had been offended at the idea of his mother’s sister going out to work every day from under his roof—of any woman doing so, in whom he was interested. Come to think of it, he was glad he had said he “wouldn’t have it”; he meant that. He had told Nell also that he wouldn’t have it.
“Still,” he admitted, “I might have been a little more—well, more cordial to her. Because I can see that she’s another one of those people.”
For lately the poor fellow had been learning something about that other sort of people—people not sensible and restrained, but full of fancies and notions and feelings; people who needed careful handling, unless you were willing to see that look of pain and disappointment in their eyes.
Mrs. Russell thought that her son looked pale and jaded that morning, and noticed, with a heavy heart, how little he ate.