"Well, Ellen!" cried Millie.
"You're going to school, then, Matthew! Surely you'll let me go in the fall. You've changed your mind about education!"
Matthew frowned. It seemed to him that Ellen thought she had him in a trap. "This is different."
"No, it isn't different!"
"This has to do with soils and the production of food for the human race. It's not idle learning."
"Mine would not be idle learning. You're not fair. You're cheating me out of what should be mine and taking it yourself!"
On the other side of the table Millie lifted a reproving face. If she had been a little more sophisticated, she would have contrived to faint or to have hysterics.
"It isn't safe for me to hear such discussions, Ellen. You should know better than to try to quarrel now!"
Matthew looked at Millie in alarm. There was some ground for Ellen's resentment, but her heart was wrong, her demands were wrong, her carelessness of Millie's health was most wrong of all. He silenced her roughly and effectively. "Can't you cut it out, Ellen? Especially under these circumstances?"
Millie's convalescence after the birth of her baby was, as was to be expected, a slow and luxurious process. Her mother, an inmate of the Levis house for a month, scolded, the doctor admonished, but she lay at ease, her young prince on her arm. When her mother departed, protesting that only pity for Ellen had kept her so long, Millie took jealous care of the baby. She sat day after day in the kitchen with him asleep in her arms, being unwilling to trust the pleasant June air. She had been slow to forgive what she chose to consider a wanton indifference to her health, on Ellen's part, but that seemed now to be forgotten.