Miss Pritchard had no heart for guessing. The sum the girl mentioned was indeed surprising, but it only seemed to remove her further from her and from the family they both represented.
"I should be only too glad to do it for the experience alone," Elsie rattled on, "and of course what I get is only what is over and above what they pay the school. And I shall get other chances, Mr. Coates says, and—oh, Cousin Julia, I don't dare tell you—you don't"—there was a catch in her voice—"you don't sympathize. You were so different! And now you're just like—well, almost as bad as the others."
Miss Pritchard drew the little rose-colored figure close.
"Yes, I do sympathize, dear little cousin," she said, "only——"
She could not go on. And they went the rest of the way in silence. It was the first time that anything, recognized by both of them, had come between them. As the excitement that had buoyed her up for the evening began to die away, Elsie's heart was like a stone. Later it would ache. She wondered rather drearily how it would be after she was in bed. Even now she recognized something that would have been absurd if it weren't so terribly serious. To think of her demanding sympathy from Cousin Julia—of appearing almost aggrieved not to receive it—she who should be cowering beneath her scorn! How was it that she should so forget, should feel and act as if everything were true—and square?
It was being on the stage, she supposed, a real actress at last. At last! Why, it was almost at first. Who had ever been so fortunate as she! To be on the stage in New York well within a year of her first entering the city! And only to think that this might have been the last night of her engagement! How terrible that seemed now! How would she ever live without the evening to look forward to? How blissful to have another week before her—six more appearances before that vast, applauding throng! How happily would she go to sleep tonight to the music of the lullaby of the thought: "Another week at the Merry Nickel, another week at the Merry Nickel! Bliss! Bliss! Bliss!"
And yet it wasn't at all a blissful face which Miss Pritchard bore in memory to her own room that night after she had kissed Elsie, put out the light, and opened the windows. Since the girl had been at the theatre, Miss Pritchard had dropped into the habit of going in to her the last thing every night and tucking her in as if she had been a child. For somehow she had seemed, since striking out into professional life, only the more a child, more innocent, more appealingly youthful, more than ever to be sheltered and guarded. She had tried her wings, it is true; she believed she had proved them (and perchance she had!); but more than ever was she a precious and tender nestling.
As she sat by her window in the darkness, Miss Pritchard shook her head sadly. She said to herself this couldn't go on—this state of things couldn't continue. Despite Elsie's elation over the fact that she was booked for another week at the theatre, she looked more mournful and wistful and worn than ever. Some strain was wearing the child out. It wasn't the work, nor yet the excitement, for she lived on them, and not altogether unhealthily. There was no other possible explanation: it was nothing less than the strain of combating her own disapproval, tacit or expressed. Elsie was too warm-hearted to enjoy her legitimate happiness alone, too sensitive not to suffer from want of sympathy.
The change in the girl had begun to be apparent directly after Christmas. Elsie hadn't been herself since that time, which proved beyond peradventure that Miss Pritchard's suspicion was correct. The joyous, sparkling little creature whom she had found in her room on the day after Christmas, bubbling over with excitement, eager to share her good news, had become thin and wan. Her charmingly brilliant little face was not only peaked, but in repose was generally wistful or plaintive. Many a time one could have looked on it without suspecting the existence of dimples. Only in the evening did she resemble her real self. From dinner until the moment she lay in her bed, she was the Elsie Marley she had been (with negligible interruptions) since the night when she had walked straight into Miss Pritchard's heart before she had known who she was. At other times she was a pale shadow, the little ghost of the girl she had been or should be.
Miss Pritchard sighed deeply. If it were for want of sympathy—approving sympathy—the child drooped and pined, must she not have it, willy-nilly? But again she sighed, and yet more deeply. Whatever her effort, was such a thing possible?