“An’ you haint got dat ’surance money and cyant git hit, Baby?” she asked, when Mrs. Carruth had finished explaining the situation to them.
“No, Mammy; it is impossible. I have hoped until the last moment, but now I must give up all hope.”
“But—but I done paid de prem’ym ter dat little Sniffin’s man, an’ he say we git de money all right an’ straight,” argued Mammy, loath to give up her hope.
“I know that, Mammy. He told you so in all good faith. It is not his fault in the least. It would have been settled at once, had we not—had we not—” Mrs. Carruth hesitated. She was reluctant to lay the blame upon Eleanor.
“Oh, it is all my fault! All. If I had not brought those hateful acids into the house we would never have had all this trouble. I shall never forgive myself, and I should think you’d all want to kill me,” wailed the cause of the family’s misfortune, springing to her feet to pace rapidly up and down the room, quite unconscious that a long feather boa which happened to have been upon the back of her chair, had caught upon her belt-pin and was trailing out behind in a manner to suggest Darwin’s theory of the origin of man.
“My child you need not reproach yourself. You were working for our mutual benefit. You knew nothing of the conditions—”
“Knew nothing! Knew nothing!” broke in Eleanor. “That’s just it. It was my business to know! And I tell you one thing, in future I mean to know, and not go blundering along in ignorance and wrecking everybody else as well as myself. I’m just no better than a fool with all my poring over books and experimenting. After this I’ll find out where my feet are, even if my head is stuck in the clouds. And now, mother, listen: Since I am responsible for this mess it is certainly up to me to help you to pull out of it, and I’m going to do it, I’ve spoken to Mr. Hillard, and asked him about coaching, and he says he can get me plenty of students who will be only too glad if I can give them the time. And I’m going to do it three afternoons a week. I shall have to do it between four and six, as those are my only free hours, and if I can’t coach better than some I’ve known to undertake it, I’ll quit altogether.”
As Eleanor talked, Mammy’s expression became more and more horrified. When she ceased speaking the old woman rose from the hassock upon which she sat, and crossing the room to Mrs. Carruth’s side laid her hand upon her shoulder as she asked in an awed voice:
“Baby you won’t let her do no sich t’ing as dat? Cou’se you won’t. Wimmin folks now-a-days has powerful strange ways, dat I kin see myse’f, but we-all don’ do sich lak. Miss Nornie wouldn’t never in de roun’ worl’ do dat, would she, honey? She jist a projectin’, ain’t she?”
Mammy’s old face was so troubled that Mrs. Carruth was much mystified.