“What will kill him? What is wrong? Do, please, tell me,” said Linda.
Nora looked at her with flashing eyes.
“How bright your cheeks are, Nora, and how your eyes shine! But you look very, very angry. What can be the matter?”
“Matter? There is plenty the matter. I cannot tell you now,” said Nora.
“Then I'll go up and ask mother; perhaps she will tell me. It has something to do with that old place of yours, I have not the slightest doubt. Mother has got a very long letter from Ireland; she will tell me perhaps.”
“Yes, go; and don't come back again,” said Nora, almost rudely.
“She gets worse and worse,” thought Linda as she slowly mounted the stairs. “Nora is anything but a pleasure in the house. At first when she came she was not quite so bad; she had a pretty face, and her manners had not been coarsened from contamination with Molly. Now she is much changed. Yes, I'll go to mother and talk to her. What an awful afternoon we are likely to have with that American girl here and Nora changing for the worse hour by hour.”
Linda knocked at her mother's door. Mrs. Hartrick was not well, and was sitting up in bed reading her letters.
“My head is better, Linda,” she said. “I shall get up presently. What is it, darling?”
“It is only the usual thing,” said Linda, with a deep sigh. “I am always being rubbed the wrong way, and I don't like it.”