Here Mr. Murchison broke off and turned away quickly.
Tears came into Lucia’s eyes, but she whisked them away with the little lace handkerchief which lay by her on the desk to which they had drawn their chairs. “Poor Uncle! He couldn’t have said another word without his voice shaking, I know. But he wanted to tell me. Oh, Betty, isn’t life hard sometimes! I can’t study! Come over here on the chaise longue and let me tell you things. I’ve wanted to for a long time.”
CHAPTER VI
LUCIA’S CONFIDENCES
There was room for the two girls on the cushions of the silken couch that was rather broader than the ordinary chaise longue. Golden hair and dark hair mingled, after Lucia arranged the cushions and settled down herself with her head in the curve of Betty’s shoulder and neck. She possessed herself of Betty’s hand and said, “I hope you don’t mind these close quarters.”
“I’m as comfy as can be,” returned Betty, giving a squeeze to the slender hand.
“You are such a comfortable person, Betty Lee, and I don’t feel that you are ready to take up everything a girl says or does to criticize it. I’ve been envying Carolyn and Kathryn for seeing so much of you.”
“Why, Lucia!” cried Betty, very much surprised. “I have time for more than one or two friends!”
“I know it and that is why I want to talk to you about things. By the way, Grandmother called you Mary, I noticed. There was a young friend of Aunt Laura’s, when she was a girl, by that name—Uncle said. If Grandmother could go to sleep by ‘Willie’ and never wake up, except in heaven, it would be a blessing. I’m glad I thought of taking the dolls to her, though it might have started a good deal of trouble, too. But she usually takes everything sweetly. That’s the advantage of having a good disposition, I suppose, if you lose your mind.”
“I’m afraid it might not make any difference; but its worth cultivating anyhow,” suggested sensible Betty.
“‘Like sweet bells jangled and out of tune’ Uncle says her mind is, but not ‘harsh,’ as Ophelia says of Hamlet. I thought of it when we were reading Hamlet in English the other day. But that isn’t what I want to talk to you about. It is what I am going to do about staying in America—and that brings in other things. I hardly know how to begin.”