Kate was amazed to have Aunt Katherine so appealing to her. All barriers were down between them. They were talking as two girls might, or two women.
“Nothing unkind, of course! I don’t know how you could be kinder. But, Aunt Katherine, do you truly like Elsie? It may be that she feels, in spite of your kindness, that you just don’t like her.”
“Does it seem that way to you?”
“No—perhaps not. But there is something in your voice when you speak to her—a difference. I don’t know how to express it. If you truly don’t like her, perhaps you can’t help showing it a little.”
Aunt Katherine said no more for a while. But she was thinking. “It’s queer,” she said finally, “very queer, the way I am talking to you. I am treating you as though you were your mother almost. And you are like your mother, in deep ways. Only you are franker, more open. You say right out the things that she might think but wouldn’t say. Well, and since I am saying things right out, too—I don’t like Elsie. You are right there. I tried to. But I simply couldn’t. She is too unnatural, too cold and heartless, and perhaps self-seeking. The irony of it is that she is all I have left to love, the only person in the world who needs me now—or, rather, the only person who will let herself use me. But I can’t like her.”
Kate was embarrassed at this revelation, and at the same time deeply sorry for her aunt. For the present the subject dropped between them.
* * * * * * * *
In Boston Kate looked about her with the greatest interest as the car crept through the crowded business section. She had been in Boston before on brief holiday visits with her mother, stopping at little boarding houses, and spending most of the time in art galleries or the Museum or on trolley rides to places of historical interest. But now she was seeing it from a new angle, leisurely and in comfort. There was no jostling, no hurrying, no aching feet.
They drew up to a curb in Boylston Street. Timothy got out and came around for orders. “Go up and ask Mr. O’Brien to come down to the car, Timothy. Tell him I have only a minute.”
Almost at once a spruce, energetic-looking young man stood at the car door, his straw hat in his hand.