“Oh, Miss Ware, must we go all over that again? Won’t you try to see it our way, as—as your brother does? He never even talked of our coming here to live, he understands so well that we want to be independent. I know we must be a great disappointment to you. Cousin Nancy in Virginia feels just as you do, too. Ever so many persons have offered us a home. You can’t think what beautiful letters we’ve had from Dad’s friends through the west. If it were possible to move him we’d go out there to try our fortune; there are so many splendid out-of-door kinds of work a girl can do in that big country. But Dad can’t be moved, and we’ve got to do the best we can right here in Radnor.” She spoke convincingly and with a certain submissiveness that sat oddly on her young shoulders.
Miss Ware, twisting her rings round on her fingers with a contemplative air was wondering where the child got that dignity and poise.
“I’ve no patience with you whatever,” she said finally, after a long pause, in which Hester imagined she had been waging an inward conflict. “I am wholly out of sympathy with your ideas, but you cannot be allowed to starve to death, and if cooking is the height of your ambition—”
“It isn’t the height of our ambition,” interrupted Hester, for youth is impatient of being misunderstood; “it is only the thing that is nearest at hand.”
“Your education must be sadly deficient,” regarding the girl critically. “I always told Philip the harum-scarum way you were being brought up was perfectly ruinous. If you had gone to school like other girls, you would be qualified for some lady-like position.”
This was too much for Hester. “You need not trouble to do anything about the cake, Miss Ware,” she said, proudly, “and I shan’t come here again to hear my father insulted. And we are not going to starve either,” she cried, her girlish wrath rising. “We are going to succeed and be a credit to the best education in the world!”
She threw back her head and gazed straight into the older woman’s eyes with a fearless look that was hard to meet. Only the fingers curled tight into the palms of her hands, betrayed the mighty effort she was making to hold herself in check, and this Miss Ware did not see, for Hester’s unflinching eyes held her with a strange fascination. In another moment the girl had turned and left the room.
For a while after her departure Miss Ware sat motionless like a person who has received a shock. Presently she began to toy with her lorgnette, dangling it back and forth on its chain with a swinging movement as if keeping time to a rhythmic train of thought. This was not, indeed, the case, and the action arose from nervousness, for the usual calm placidity of her mind was sadly ruffled. She was not in the habit of being contradicted, particularly by what she was pleased to call “a young person”; but she was one of those women who having said their worst, proceed to contradict themselves by an interest in that which they have most condemned, and she was now speculating as to whether it would not be expedient to take Hester’s cake to the meeting of her sewing class the following day, and possibly get an order or two there for it.
Only a true Radnorite could realize the possibilities that opened up to one who was introduced as a subject of discussion at the Sewing Class of Radnor. For in the fashionable and exclusive set in which Miss Ware had her being it was a function of tremendous importance, with sacred rites known only to the initiated. In one another’s drawing-rooms, on two mornings of the month, forty chosen spirits met to sew for the poor—that great, clamorous, all-devouring body from which there is no escape. This was ostensibly the purpose; in reality sewing was a minor consideration, albeit much work was accomplished. The chief end of its existence was to discuss, direct and control the movements of that exclusive portion of Radnor society of which it was a part and upon which it sat in fortnightly judgment. Following this arduous but important morning duty came the luncheon, and it was of that Miss Ware was thinking in connection with the cake.
When Hester left Miss Ware she ran down the stairs to the lower hall, where she had left Peter Snooks with strict orders to remain until her return. There she found him waiting to greet her with joyous caperings of delight.