“Where’s Mrs. Widgery?” she said at last with an effect of stupendous self-control.
“Up in the laundry seeing to things. No need to bother her. We been talking about all this, over and over, and we’re quite of one mind in the matter. It’s our right to look after you and it’s our responsibility to look after you, and we mean to do our duty by you, Chrissie, whether you like it or not.”
Unpleasant doubts assailed Christina Alberta. She was still two months short of one and twenty, and it was quite conceivable that the law gave this ugly, oily creature all sorts of preposterous powers of interference with her. Still it was her style to carry off things with a brave face.
“All this is just nonsense,” she said. “I’m not going to have my Daddy put away like this without a word from me, and I’m not going to let you muddle about with his property. Everybody in the family knows you’re a crooked muddler. Mother used to say so. I’m going to see about him myself, and I’m going to have him sent off to some special sort of mental nursing place where he can have proper attention. And that’s what I came to tell you.”
Mr. Widgery’s little eyes seemed to weigh and judge her. “You’re giving yourself high and mighty airs, Chrissie,” he said, after a little pause. “You’ll do this and you’ll do that. You’ve got a sort of wrong idea of what you can do in the world. You haven’t got any money and you haven’t got any authority, and the sooner you get that into your head the better.”
That scared feeling was gaining upon Christina Alberta. In order to counteract it she deliberately lost her temper. “I’ll jolly soon show you what I can do and what you can’t,” she said with a flaming face.
“Now don’t yew go getting excited,” said Mr. Widgery. “You of all people shouldn’t get excited.”
“Excited!” said Christina Alberta; rallying for a repartee, and then struck by an ugly thought she stopped short and stared at the little bright brown eyes in the pock-marked face. Mutely they answered her mute amazed question. This was the third or fourth time he had used the word “excited” and now she knew what he was aiming at. Suddenly she realized the train of ideas that her Daddy’s extinction had set going in his head. He also had been studying the lunacy laws—and dreaming dreams.
“Exactly,” said Mr. Widgery. “You’ve always been a queerish sort of girl, Chrissie, and the rackety life you lead and now this affair has been a strain on you. Must have been. You’ve got no quiet friends but your aunt and me and no quiet place to come to but here. Don’t you go flaring out at me, Chrissie; I mean well by you. I’m not going to go paying you money to keep you up there in London. Why!—you might go gettings drugs or anything. Call me a something rascal if you like. Swear at me as though you were out of your senses; it won’t alter what I mean to do. I want you to come down here and rest your mind and nerves for a time, and let me get in some one to see you—see what ought to be done about you.... You’ll thank me for it some day.”
His big grey face seemed to expand and swim about before her eyes and the room grew small and dark.