A week after she became of age she was dismantling the bay-windowed room of such things as were hers. Little by little it grew as cold and cheerless as the one adjoining, now the personality of Aunt Harriet was gone out of it. What would become of Uncle Austen after both were gone?
She had tried to force from him some expression of feeling, at first wistfully, then determinedly. There is a chance, had he responded, that she would have made other arrangements for her mother. Then she told herself she did not care and went hotly on with her preparations.
She had taken two bedrooms and a parlour at a hotel, and had written her mother to go directly there, but the night of her arrival the girl felt she could not go to meet her. It was too late an hour anyhow, she would wait until morning, but she shrank so from that first moment she could not sleep.
She and her uncle met at the breakfast table the next morning. She made one or two attempts at conversation. “I go to-day, Uncle Austen,” she said at last, and, leaning forward, pushed a paper across the table to him. It was the final statement of the household expenditures under her management.
Her board from her first coming had been paid into the general house fund, and, accordingly, she had included against herself charge for these several days in the new month.
Noting it, Austen Blair nodded; it was the first approval accorded her for some time.
She laughed. “I go to-day,” she repeated.
Her uncle, who had risen, put the paper, neatly folded, into his wallet, then crossed to her and put out his hand.
“I will not see you again then?” he said, and shook hands.
A moment after she heard the front door close.