“I casually mention hearing from my father to my mother and I leave the letter where she can read it, pretending to take it for granted that she will read it, of course. But Mother wouldn’t ask for the letters and for a long time I think she didn’t read them, till one day I wanted to look up something my father said about what he was doing and I found several old letters to me lying on Mother’s desk. Of course she had been called somewhere and had forgotten to take them back to my room. It did not matter, to be sure, except to keep from me that she wanted to read them. Do you think I am very dreadful to tell anybody all this, Betty? You see I want you to tell me what else you think I could do.”
But Lucia did not wait for Betty’s comment. She went on with the account.
“I’m not going to put up with it, Betty! I’m going back to my father this summer if he wants me! I’m putting by enough money for my fare and passage across, though I think I could cash a draft from him without their finding it out. Perhaps that would bring Mother! I don’t know! I’ve thought and thought about it until I’m most sick over it now.” Lucia checked a sob.
“You saw that horrid man at the table tonight and heard the silly compliments he makes to my mother. She doesn’t care a centime for him; but she’s getting so reckless with all this social stuff that I’m most scared for fear she will start divorce proceedings.”
“Couldn’t you talk to your uncle about it?” asked Betty, who thought it a terrible situation indeed. “It doesn’t seem to me that it would do for you to just go off, even if your father does want you.”
“I will if my mother is going to leave him. I almost ran away to keep from coming.” Lucia’s voice was defiant.
“Well, then, why don’t you write to your father, tell him that you know your mother loves him and tell him just to come over and get her!”
Lucia laughed then. “The girls would say that you are old-fashioned, Betty. Men don’t carry their wives off nowadays.”
Betty laughed but asserted that they “ought to sometimes.” “It’s their business to take care of their wives and if their wives are—mistaken—to prove it to them. My father would say, ‘Now, dear, this is all a mistake. You come right along home with me and I’ll explain it to you!’”
“What if she wouldn’t go?”