"I confess, Elsie, I can't conceive how you should want so large a sum at this time," Miss Pritchard began. "I trust you so thoroughly that I believe it must be for something worth while—at least you think it is, child. And I feel that you so trust me that you will explain to me if you can. In any event, I have decided to give it to you out of my own pocket. I know that you are careful and economical and think it must be for your education in some manner, and don't feel that I am foolish in doing it. How will you have it, check or cash?"
Elsie had been growing weak after the first surprise. She had already cashed three huge checks (as they seemed to her), and sent them in money-orders to Enderby: and she had forwarded a letter some time before that Elsie had explained to be a request for money. But she was aghast at the sum. She couldn't imagine what the other girl could want it for.
The tradition had always been in her family, who were always poor, that Uncle John was rich; and though she had learned with some surprise that he had only one servant, she had heard nothing to indicate that he did not live in the "style" she had always imagined. She felt troubled if it was in order to keep up with that style that Elsie Marley wanted the money; but though she was reluctant to take it from Miss Pritchard, she by no means hesitated as she had in the case of the opera-cloak. For this was a legitimate case of Pritchard to Pritchard.
"A check?" repeated Miss Pritchard.
"Cash, please, Cousin Julia," returned the girl, her dimples almost visible. Then she looked straight into Miss Pritchard's eyes.
"Please tell me—are you doing this, too, because I'm not a Pritchard, or as my guardian?"
And whether it was because the girl's heart was so set upon that particular answer, or because Julia Pritchard was so staunch and true, with such a keen instinct for the real and right—in any event she returned promptly: "As your guardian, Elsie, Pritchard to Pritchard."
Elsie embraced her warmly, whispering that she couldn't explain, but it was truly all right. The next day she got a post-office order and sent the money to Elsie Marley without saying that it hadn't come from the lawyer in California as the other sums she had forwarded had done. Consequently, when a letter came from Mr. Bliss saying that he couldn't let Elsie Marley have the five hundred dollars she had asked for without an order from her guardian, she felt obliged to withhold it entirely.
It troubled her to do so, and weighed upon her mind afterward. She told herself that she would, of course, explain when she saw Elsie Marley, and meantime—it was, after all, nothing but a formal business communication, not a real letter, and of no account in that the business itself had gone through. Still, it seemed a great pity that there should be any concealment between herself and the other Elsie. As things stood, she was sufficiently involved in concealment, to give it no worse name, without that. It had been understood that she should read all the letters that came before sending them on to Enderby; but to keep one and never mention it, necessary though it was, and demanded by circumstances, seemed somehow almost like stealing.
And the worst was that circumstances might go on making demands, and she might have to do yet more reprehensible things—things that weren't merely almost like wrong-doing. Some day she might have to lie right out.