“I thought,” she said slowly, “that after Albertina I wouldn’t take anything from anybody. Uncle Peter says that I’m just as good as anybody, even if I have been out to work. He said that all I had to do was just to stand up to people.”
“There are a good many different ways of standing up to people, Eleanor. Be sure you’ve got the right way and then go ahead.”
“I guess I ought to have been politer,” Eleanor said slowly. “I ought to have thought that she was your own mother. You couldn’t help the way she acted, o’ course.”
“The way you acted is the point, Eleanor.”
Eleanor reflected.
“I’ll act different if you want me to, Uncle David,” she said, “and I won’t go and leave you.”
“That’s my brave girl. I don’t think that I altogether cover myself with glory in an interview with my mother,” he added. “It isn’t the thing that I’m best at, I admit.”
“You did pretty good,” Eleanor consoled him. “I guess she makes you kind of bashful the way she does me,” from which David gathered with an odd sense of shock that Eleanor felt there was 148 something to criticize in his conduct, if she had permitted herself to look for it.
“I know what I’ll do,” Eleanor decided dreamily with her nose against the pane. “I’ll just pretend that she’s Mrs. O’Farrel’s aunt, and then whatever she does, I shan’t care. I’ll know that I’m the strongest and could hit her if I had a mind to, and then I shan’t want to.”
David contemplated her gravely for several seconds.