“You don’t mean to say you’re going to refuse.”
She gravely nodded.
“But, Lizzie, think, listen. You don’t realize what a chance this is. Any teacher you may choose, for as long as you like, all worry about money over. I know Mrs. Ferguson, she’s never attempted anything that she hasn’t carried through—”
I launched forth into a eulogy of Betty, and branched from that into a list of the advantages accruing to the object of her bounty, holding them up, viewing them from all sides like choice articles I was offering for sale. I was eloquent, I was persuasive, I introduced irrefutable arguments. Any other woman standing with reluctant feet on the verge of such an enterprise, would have ceased to be reluctant and leaped toward the future I pictured.
But Lizzie was immovable. I saw my words flying off her as if they were bird-shot striking on an armored cruiser. She had only one reason for refusing but that was beyond the power of words to shake—she had given up her career as a singer; nothing would ever make her return to it.
I sank down on the wooden chair, my head on my breast, despair claiming me. She went about the kitchen in a vague incompetent way picking things up and putting them down, then suddenly wanting them and forgetting where they were. As she trailed about she drove home her refusal with a series of disconnected sentences, bubbles of thought rising to occasional speech. I didn’t answer her, sitting crumpled on the chair—until she had refused, I hadn’t realized how much I had hoped.
Presently she swept into the back room, carrying a pile of plates with the air of an empress bearing the royal insignia. I heard her setting them on the dining-table and then a rattle of silver. She came back and hunted about, feeling on shelves and opening cupboard doors, then said, in the deep tones made for the great tragic rôles:
“Evie, there was a lemon pie somewhere around here. You’re not sitting on it by any chance?”
Filled with misery I indicated the pie on the top of the ice-box. In the pursuit of her domestic duties she had thrown a dish-cloth over it. She removed the cloth, and picking up the pie, looked it over solicitously.
“You’re going to sup with me to-night and eat this.”