“You do. You came in here with that sanctimonious look on your face,—though a lie in your heart,—as if you thought yourself a little better than all the world, and were fully determined that all the world should know it.”
The sneer which cuts deepest is the sneer which has a bit of truth in it.
Poor Paula eyes filled. She did not find the work of missionizing so much to her taste as she had fancied, and it is certain that she could not have selected a more difficult subject to try her hand upon.
Melville was shrewd and clever. Paula was clever, but not at all shrewd. The boy did not know, of course, about the family project of his reconstruction, but he was quick to scent out Paula’s motive for preaching to him.
“See here,” he said testily; “we might as well make an end of this business before it is begun. I am shut in here, and cannot do much for myself; but what I can do I will—you bet! And one of these things is that I can say who shall and who shall not inflict their society upon me. These rooms belong to my grandmother and me as much as the rest of the house does to Grandmother Kinsolving. There is one class on which I shall always have the door shut,—the class of saints. It is unfortunate that you should belong to it; but, since you do, the deduction is obvious.”
If Paula had had any doubt as to his meaning, it was removed by the very significant glance her cousin cast upon the door. With burning cheeks, and feeling as if she would never again try any missionary work, she rose and walked away. As she reached the door, Melville called after her: “If you see Content, or even the little fighter, send them in. It’s horrid lonesome.”
There was no reply, and as her footsteps died away Melville judged, and rightly, that his message would not be delivered. Paula went straight to her room, and to her teasing sister Octave, to go through the familiar trial of the younger girl’s gibing tongue just when she was most ill-fitted to endure it.
It was an hour after Octave had left her, and after poor Paula had relieved her anger by a fit of weeping, that she smoothed her ruffled feathers once more and went below stairs. She expected a word of reproof from her punctual Aunt Ruth for her late appearance at table, but to her surprise the supper-room was unoccupied. The meal had evidently been going on, and had been interrupted by some unusual occurrence; for the plates showed half-eaten food, napkins had fallen in uncommon places, and the disarranged chairs proved that the family had left the apartment in haste.
Paula walked to the door and looked out. There was not a person in sight; neither was there anything but the absence of human life to give her occasion for anxiety; yet a feeling of uneasiness stole over her, which, had she been as nervous as Mrs. Capers, she would have called a “presentiment” of some mischance.
After a moment of searching the lawn for any sign of the family, she fancied that she could detect the outlines of a group of people in a distant field, which was almost hidden from the house by a thick grove; she raised her clear voice and shouted, “Octave! Christina! Uncle Fritz!”