For a time she was hysterical.
Blanche coming down from the floor above found her sister tearing at her hair.
“Good heavens, Mill, what’s up?” she asked.
Millie had passed through the worst stages of her seizure by then, and she dropped her hands. “I dunno,” she said. “It’s this beastly mill, I suppose.”
“I like it,” returned Blanche.
“Oh, you,” said Millie, full of scorn for Blanche’s frigidity. “You ought to have been a man, you ought.”
“I dunno what’s come to you,” was Blanche’s comment.
3
It was maturity that had come to Millie. Her new life of air and physical exercise had set the blood running in her veins. In the Wisteria Grove days she had had an anæmic tendency; the limited routine of her existence and all the suppressions of her narrow life had retarded her development. Now she was suddenly ripe. Two months of sun and air had brought superabundant vitality, and the surplus had become the most important factor in her existence. She found no outlet for her new vigour in the work of the mill. Something within her was crying out for joy. She wanted to find expression.