“Dick, she must return, and at once,” Dora declared, vehemently.
“Not to this place, Dora. She would never do it. It wouldn’t be fair to ask her.”
“But something must be done.”
“I feel pretty sick about it. It was partly through me and my wretched debts that father and mother got so short of money. Mother was always hard up. It runs in the blood. And, what with one thing and another, we were all of us in a pretty tight fix; and she tried to get us out of it.”
“I don’t blame her for altering her father’s checks. That’s nothing,” observed Dora, with typical feminine inconsequence, “but letting people think that—”
“I know, I know! But it couldn’t really have done me any harm when I was under the turf; and it meant ruin to father, if she had done nothing. Look here, Dora, mother must come back, or father must go to her. We’ve got to arrange it between us. If mother won’t come home, she must be fetched.”
Dora sat for a few moments with her elbows resting on her knees and her chin on her hands, gazing thoughtfully out of the window, watching the sparrows on the path outside.
“Can she ever forgive him?” she asked, after a pause.
“Well, the sermon was certainly pretty rough, 344 especially after things had been all smoothed out. But father is a demon for doing nasty things when he thinks they’ve got to be done. You don’t suppose he’s any less fond of mother than before, do you?”
“No; but, you see, a woman feels differently about these things—things of conscience, I mean. Your mother probably thinks he despises her, and a proud woman can never stand that.”