“Not scold, of course, but I am sure she would disapprove,” said Mrs. Rose meekly.
“Ah! I thought so. Well, I will give the old lady something to talk about then. Mabin shall stay with Mrs. Dale if she wishes.”
Mrs. Rose sighed heavily.
“She will wish it, of course. Girls always wish to do the very things which are not proper for them.”
“You may be quite satisfied, Emily, that what I allow my daughter to do is quite proper,” said Mr. Rose severely, as he left the room.
Mrs. Rose sighed. She had not told him, because it would have been of no use, that she had to be more particular than he about Mabin, because, being the girl’s step-mother only, she was the more exposed to the gossip of the neighborhood—a force she dreaded—than her husband was. But she vented her ill-humor on Mabin herself, whom she informed very acidly that if she chose to go to “this Mrs. Dale,” and was not comfortable with her, the fault was hers and her father’s.
Mabin received these remarks meekly, rejoicing in the approaching holiday. She had nothing very serious to complain of in her treatment under her father’s roof, but the snubs of her father, the tacit dislike of her step-mother, and the fact that the difference in age between her half-sisters and herself left her much alone, all combined to make her welcome the change.
Emily and Ethel, who were fourteen and twelve years of age, insipid and spiritless young persons with little brown eyes and little brown pigtails, teased her with questions about her visit of the afternoon.
“Is it true that her hair’s dyed?” asked Emily, getting Mabin into a corner after tea.
“No, of course it’s not,” was the indignant answer.