A light footstep sounded along the hall and Selina paused in her mother's doorway. It was September and, after the long summer, pleasures and activities were starting up. She had been to the theater with Tuttle last night, and this morning was allowed to have her sleep out. Here at half-past nine she was just coming up from her breakfast!
This Selina standing there in the doorway, looking from her mother to her aunt, was nineteen now and past, but beneath something of gravity now in the face under the very lovely hair, she still was sweet and loving and anxious.
"How bad is it, Lavinia?" Auntie was saying.
Mamma looking across to the door saw her child. "Come in, Selina. You've heard as much, and you may as well hear the rest. There's no money for Viney. Last month's bills all lapsed over because Robert told me I'd have to wait. And now they've come in with this month's bills. The iceman's been here three times."
Here Mamma's hands dropped into her lap with a gesture that carried dismay to the others. It was the gesture of one who abjures any further responsibility, of one who steps aside. No defence was left in her, no air of anxious justification. She would state the whole, her manner seemed to say, without reserve and without mincing, and let somebody else face the issue.
The face of this older Selina, standing there in the doorway, had gathered something of decision, too, and something of the inner steady flame that comes with this gain in character.
"How has Papa explained it, Mamma? What did he say when he told you that you would have to wait?"
"He didn't explain and I didn't like to ask. It's been clear he was worried all along through the summer."
"Mamma, I think you should have asked. Or I think Papa should have told you, so you wouldn't have to ask."