Everybody, including Grandmother, drew a sigh of relief. There would be no more living on the surface, trying not to express what they felt. There would be no more listening to little poisoned barbs of speech implying criticism, expressing a feigned anxiety about Madam LeRoy, in the guise of virtue and devotion.
Rita came right out one day soon after the departure and asked Ann what she thought of her aunt. “Nothing here suited her,” said Rita. “You could feel how superior she felt to us all. You would have thought that your mother had kidnaped your grandmother by the way she shook her head to me once and said that they ran a terrible risk by bringing her mother away from the sanitarium where she put her.
“I spoke right up and said, ‘From what I hear there are others that have taken worse risks than that in regard to their mother.’ Of course I meant her, and I went right out of the room with my dust cloth, for fear I might say something else. Nancy told me a lot, you see, and I thought I’d better ask you if it was true.”
“What Nancy told you is probably true in the main, though I suppose that there is a lot of gossip among Grandmother’s servants that may not be true.”
“She,—I mean Mrs. Tyson—was not going to let you folks have her mother and her mother’s money, I suppose. That is what Nancy said. But it was a queer performance, in my opinion, to come right here, after what Nancy says she has done to your mother. It put you in a funny position, too. You couldn’t turn her out, though I think, myself, that that’s what ought to have been done!”
“We couldn’t do that, Rita,” laughed Ann. “People can’t act like ‘fish-wives’ in a fight. Can you imagine Mother’s doing anything of the sort?”
“Indeed I could not! And to be taken advantage of that way! If anything happens, we know what we know out here about the Sterling family!”
“I hope that it’s good, Rita.”
“It most certainly is!”
“Nothing is going to ‘happen,’ Rita. Grandmother knows us by this time. But you see, Rita, Aunt Sue is Grandmother’s daughter and Mother’s own sister. So it would make Mother feel bad to have any gossip about it out here.”