“Oh, mother, it isn’t that we don’t want you, but we do want to have our fun. We can’t be young twice, you know.”
“Nesta said that—Nesta is tired of me, too.”
“We are none of us tired of you.”
“Yes, you are,” said Mrs Aldworth. “You know you are, you are all tired of me; Marcia is right. You may go, Molly.”
At that strange new tone, that look on the invalid’s white face, a girl with a better heart, with any sort of real comprehension of character, with any sort of unselfishness, would immediately have yielded; but Molly was shallow, frothy, selfish, unreliable.
“If you really mean it,” she said—“we could quite well spare Susan.”
“It doesn’t matter; you can go.”
“I’ll send Ethel up presently, mother. It seems so rude just when they have come from such a long way off, in the burning sun and by special invitation. And there is Jim—you know, you always like us to chat with Jim.”
“You can go,” said Mrs Aldworth. “I would not stand in your way for anything. It’s all right.”
The sun was pouring in at the window. Mrs Aldworth’s head was hot, her feet were cold; her fancy work had fallen to the ground; all her working materials were scattered here, there and everywhere, but she rather hugged her own sense of discomfort.