“Are these Pullman cars?”
“No!” said Gabrielle, shocked yet laughing, as they mounted the three steps to the side door. “They are wonderful nuns. And they both feel that, under the circumstances, I had better wait and see if Aunt Flora has any plans or any use for me here!”
“And I think that, too,” David said, heartily, delighted to find her so reasonable. “You are not yet nineteen, after all, and we’ll find the happiest solution for you one of these days. I’ll be coming and going all winter, and Sylvia’ll be home, with a degree, in June. So keep up your spirits!”
“Ah, don’t worry about me!” she answered, courageously, going in to breakfast.
CHAPTER V
Three hours later she said good-bye to him composedly at Aunt Flora’s side. He carried away a pleasant recollection of her, standing there tall and smiling, with her gray eyes shining. She was a more than usually interesting type of girl, David mused, going upon his way, and as the man of the family it behooved him to think out some constructive line of guidance in her direction. What about an allowance? Just what would Gabrielle’s status be a year from now, when Sylvia reached her majority and Aunt Flora no longer controlled both girls as if their position were equal? Sylvia might graciously provide for this less fortunate cousin if Sylvia were properly influenced.
This was October; Sylvia was going with the Montallen girls to Quebec for a simple family Thanksgiving week-end, but she would be home for almost three weeks at Christmas time. David must manage a talk with her then. Perhaps the peculiar embarrassments and deprivations of Gabrielle’s position had never occurred to Sylvia, as indeed they never had presented themselves so forcibly to David before. “She is certainly a stunning creature—character, too,” David thought. “God help the child, shut up there with Aunt Flora and the servants, and with Aunt Flora always so curiously hostile to her, at that! I’ll try to get down there before Christmas—see how it goes!”
And he put the thought of Wastewater behind him, as he usually did at about this point in his journey toward Boston or New York.
But Gabrielle had found nothing at Wastewater to make her forget David, and the thought of him lingered with her for many, many days.
They were hard days, these first after her return. Flora was not visibly unfriendly toward her, and the servants were always responsive and interested. But Gabrielle was left almost entirely to her own resources, and after the regular rule of the convent life, the orderly waxed halls in which the sunshine lay in shining pools, the low, kindly voices, the chip-chipping of girls’ feet, the cheerful chatter in the long refectory, the sheltered fragrance of the walled garden, the girl felt lonely and at a loss for employment.