I thought of Mrs. Bradly’s making them; and all the weariness of the rain and the many miles which lay between me and Queensburg sunk into my heart and ached. I felt miserable.
“Mother is going to speak to you,” Amy went on. “She hasn’t any time before Wednesday morning, but she has you marked for then. I saw it on her pad; ‘Natalie ten’ is on it. She is going to ask you to be more careful of your conversational topics. I suppose you know you didn’t make a hit yesterday?”
I hadn’t supposed I had, but I didn’t know I’d done anything very wrong. I said I was sorry if I had.
“You should be,” said Amy. “That description of how wasps laid eggs annoyed Evelyn. Someone else was talking about the Russian arts, and you came in with that, and it sounded--queer. Egg-laying is not a subject for afternoon teas, anyway.”
I didn’t see why not, but I didn’t say so. What I did say was that I was sorry I had annoyed Evelyn, and that some day, in some way, I would pay them back all I was costing them. Then I stood up and said I thought I would go off and rest for a little while. My voice sounded heavy and dull, as voices do when someone has put out all your inside fire with the cold douche of their disapproval. Amy shrugged her shoulders and didn’t reply, and I went to my room.
Here I sat down and thought--sort of miserably. We had had lights on in the drawing-room, and the fire had cheered, but my room, unlit, was gray and seemed chilly in spite of being really warm. Then I tried to write Uncle Frank and Bradly-dear, but I couldn’t. As I tore up what I had written and turned away from my small desk, my attention was caught by a movement at the window. I saw the inner drapery ripple and--that someone was hidden behind it!
I got up, shaking horribly and went to the hall to call Ito. He was slow to answer my ring, and when he at last did it was no wonder that the curtain hid nothing.
“Wind?” he said. I shook my head. Then he looked around thoroughly, but nothing could be seen. “Wind,” he said, and this time as a statement, but I was not convinced, although I let him think I was. . . . I heard Amy dressing in the adjoining room, and I was glad she hadn’t heard the noise or what it was about. I asked Ito not to tell her, and then, because I did not want to talk to her just then, put on a plain gray sailor, a long coat, and my overshoes, and started out.
The rain had almost stopped and was beginning to be a mist. I didn’t put up my umbrella, but let it blow against my cheeks, and it helped me. After I had walked eight or nine blocks I began to feel better.
I did not think Amy had been kind, but I began to realize that her lack of it was not all her fault. No one had ever seemed to have time to teach her the rules--the rules that make you take a beating without noise, and make you treat the visiting team as if they were Royalty, and make you shoulder your own mistakes. They would have taught her to stand up to punishment, even if it wasn’t hers, and bear this, unless the other fellow was big enough to speak--and she would have learned that it isn’t decent to give a person things and then speak of the cost.