"You need not go so far," said she. "Take my studio!"
"With you and Miss Brooke in the neighborhood? Never!"
"We will let you alone. In a week you will put your head out of the door and say: 'Please come and play jack-straws with me!'"
Catherine was not pleased at the thought that her usefulness was at an end. She had no longer a part to play unless it were that of duenna to Esther, and for this she was not so well fitted as she might have been, had providence thought proper to make her differently. Indeed, Esther's anxiety to do her duty as duenna to Catherine was becoming so sharp that it threatened to interfere with the pleasure of both. Catherine did her best to give her friend trouble.
"Please rub me all out, Mr. Wharton," said she; "and make Esther begin again. I am sure she will do it better the next time."
Wharton was quite ready to find an excuse for pleasing her. If it was at times a little annoying to have two women in his way whom he could not control as easily as ordinary work-people, he had become so used to the restraint as not to feel it often, and not to regard it much. Esther thought he need not distress himself by thinking that he regarded it at all. Had not Catherine been so anxious to appear as the most docile and obedient of hand-maids besides being the best-tempered of prairie creatures, she would long ago have resented his habit of first petting, then scolding, next ignoring, and again flattering her, as his mood happened to prompt. He was more respectful with Esther, and kept out of her way when he was moody, while she made it a rule never to leave her own place of work unless first invited, but Catherine, who was much by his side, got used to ill-treatment which she bore with angelic meekness. When she found herself left forgotten in a corner, or unanswered when she spoke, or unnoticed when she bade him good-morning, she consoled herself with reflecting that after every rudeness, Wharton's regard for her seemed to rise, and he took her more and more into his confidence with every new brutality.
"Some day he will drag you to the altar by the hair," said Esther; "and tell you that his happiness requires you to be his wife."
"I wish he would try," said Catherine with a little look of humor; "but he has one wife already."
"She mysteriously disappeared," replied Esther. "Some day you will find her skeleton, poor thing!"
"Do you think so?" said Catherine gravely. "How fascinating he is! He makes me shiver!"