“One wonders why she didn’t speak to Mamma in the first place,” Sylvia said, slowly, remembering the farewells, and perhaps unreasonably resenting a little Gay’s secret and Gay’s handling of it.
“She seems to want to dismiss the whole thing,” David explained. “I only mention it as a suggestion that she may solve her own problems in her own way one of these days.”
“And you really think she ought to live along here calmly, doing nothing, and dependent upon other people?” Sylvia asked, with an anxious and appealing little frown.
“Who, Gay?” said Flora Fleming, who had come downstairs and was now being settled by David in her usual chair. “But there is no talk about her going away, is there?” she asked, blinking through her glasses from one face to another.
“Not immediately, Mamma dear,” Sylvia answered, with just a faint hint of impatience in her voice that amused David with the realization that he had never before seen Sylvia so human, and incidentally so approachable. “But I suppose she will not stay here always. That wouldn’t be fair to her or to you!”
“Oh, but what would you have her do, Sylvia?” demanded her mother in alarm.
“Nothing definite, and don’t you two dear good people talk as if I were an ogre!” Sylvia said, with a laugh. “What I had vaguely in mind was some nice place—there are hundreds near the college—where she could have some young life and at the same time, by courses or special instruction, be fitting herself for her life work, whatever it’s to be! That was my entire idea, I assure you.”
David took refuge in his usual thoughtful study of the fire; Aunt Flora flung her yarn free with nervous fingers. Winter twilight was turning the windowpanes opaque, and the room was warm and close.
“You mean that we should make her an allowance, Sylvia?” her mother asked.
“Well—until she is on her own feet, of course. Pay her board, see that she has the right clothes, and pocket money. But the quickest way to be sure that she will take life seriously,” Sylvia said, “is not to make it too easy for her!”