And then again, what would Honor say? She would probably flatly refuse to have anything more to do with the Madisons, which would be unfortunate, for Katherine had set her heart upon the anticipated music that she was to enjoy with Miss Madison. Katherine was of an ardent temperament, and her likings were as strong and unchangeable as her dislikes. Already she loved and admired Miss Madison with all the enthusiasm at her command, and it would be a bitter disappointment to her if Honor should decree that the two families were to have no further intercourse. Indeed, Katherine would in all probability decline to listen to Honor, and that would make trouble. What should be done to avert these consequences?
There was but one course to pursue, and that was to keep her family in ignorance of the fact that she had ever seen Roger Madison before. Victoria fairly gasped as this solution of the difficulty presented itself. Could she keep such a secret? The sisters were in the habit of talking freely together and of telling one another all the events both large and small that came into their day. Not to make known to Honor and Katherine the fact that Victoria had met Mr. Madison before, and under the peculiar circumstances which had made the incident a matter of family history, required some determination. It meant far more to her than it would to many another girl. To Victoria it seemed like an act of deliberate deception, and she hesitated before taking the step.
“I don’t want to deceive them, I am sure,” she said to herself, as she sat under the trees this beautiful afternoon in the last week of April, looking with troubled eyes towards the house on the hill; “but it does seem a pity to deprive Katherine of the music, and if Honor knows about it, she will probably be almost rude to the Madisons, for she will be so anxious to show her pride about it, and that seems a pity, for they are so pleasant and evidently want to be friendly. I can keep out of Mr. Madison’s way, and perhaps it will be a long time before he discovers me. I wish I had some older person to ask. I wish I had a mother. It must be so lovely to have one to go to whenever anything troublesome comes up. I wonder if girls who have mothers realize how terrible it is not to have one.”
Victoria’s mind wandered from her present anxiety to the thought of the mother who had died when Sophy was a baby. She had been only seven years old herself at the time, but she remembered her perfectly, and the change which it had made in her father. He had become so grave and quiet after that, and although he was always devoted to his children, he was different, Honor always said, from what he had been before. Honor had tried so faithfully to be a mother to the younger ones, thought Victoria.
“But then Honor is really so little older than I am, that sometimes it seems as if she didn’t know a great deal more herself. If only Aunt Sophia were different! But she would be no help. No, I must decide for myself and—I decide to keep it a secret!”
Victoria said the last few words aloud, with slow and deliberate emphasis. Then she rose.
“What must they have thought of me, running away in that style? And what shall I say to the girls? I shall just have to tell them that I was overwhelmed with shyness just as we were going into the room. They won’t believe me, because I’m not often shy, but I am sure it was the truth. I was frightened to pieces. What a time I shall have making up excuses for not going there, or seeing Mr. Madison if he comes here—if he comes! Very probably he won’t. And I must be careful about the trains. It would be awkward enough to meet him at our little station. Dear me, what a summer it is going to be! Aunt Sophia at Glen Arden, and the man who bought the etching in the house on the hill!
“‘Jog on, jog on the footpath way,
And merrily hent the stile—a!’
I will divert my mind by working in the garden a little. Or no, I will practise on the typewriter! If I don’t learn to do it easily soon, Aunt Sophia will suspect the plot. How many secrets we’re having now. I don’t mind having them from Aunt Sophia, but I do hate to have anything on my mind that Honor and Katherine are not to know.”
She had not been long at work before she heard footsteps upon the piazza, and the voices of her two sisters.