Very quietly the little girl went up to her own room. Jasper, her eyes almost swollen out of her head with crying, was there to wait on her.
“I have been packing up, Miss Evelyn,” she said. “I am to go this afternoon. Her ladyship has made all arrangements, and a cab is to come from the ‘Green Man’ in the village to fetch me and my luggage at half-past three. It is almost past belief, Miss Eve, that you and me should be parted like this.”
“You look horrid, Jasper, when you cry so hard!” said Evelyn. “Oh, of course I am awfully sorry; I do not know how I shall live without you.”
“You will miss me a good bit,” said the woman. “I am surprised, though, that you should take it as you do. If you raised your voice and started the whole place in an uproar you would be bound to have your own way. But as it is, you are mum as you please; never a word out of you either of sorrow or anything else, but off you go larking with those children and forgetting the one who has made you, mended you, and done everything on earth for you since long before your mother died.”
“Don’t remind me of mothery now,” said the girl, and her lips trembled; then she added in a changed voice: “I cannot help it, Jasper. I have been fighting ever since I came here, and I want to fight—oh, most badly, most desperately!—but somehow the courage has gone out of me. I am ever so sorry for you, Jasper, but I cannot help myself; I really cannot.”
Jasper was silent. After a time she said slowly:
“And your mother wrote a letter on her deathbed asking Lady Frances to let me stay with you whatever happened.”
“I know,” said Evelyn. “It is awful of her; it really is.”
“And do you think,” continued the woman, “I am going to submit?”
“Why, you must, Jasper. You cannot stay if they do not wish for you. And you have got all your wages, have you not?”