Ethel Blue thought of a great many things to say in reply to her father. They sounded very smart and very convincing as she said them over to herself in a whisper, but just as she was wiping her eyes and getting up to sit at her desk and put them on paper her Aunt Marion’s suggestion that she would be selfish if she did anything that would hurt her father or prevent him from making a belated happiness for himself cut her to the heart.
“He doesn’t love me or he wouldn’t do it,” she repeated, and then she remembered that all her life she had had a home and a loving family of cousins who were as good as brothers and sisters, while her father had spent the same time without the thought, even, of home-making.
“I suppose it’s some old Fort Myer woman who’s as cross as two sticks,” she murmured again and again; and then an inner voice seemed to speak in her ear and tell her that there was no reason why she should not imagine that it was some really lovely person who was as sweet as she was pretty.
“Everybody says my mother was pretty,” thought poor Ethel Blue, who had been making herself very miserable by her old habit of “pretending” without any basis of fact, and who now was trying to get a scrap of comfort from the thought that her father had had good taste once and might be trusted to exercise it again.
Whether or not to show the letter to her Aunt Marion she did not know. Her father had not said whether he had informed her or not. Usually Ethel told her aunt everything promptly, but now she did not feel as if she could speak of the thing that had appeared dreadful when it was only a possibility. The reality was so much worse that it did not seem as if she could trust herself to mention it.
“Aunt Louise has asked him to come on to the housewarming,” she said. “I’ll wait and see if he comes. Then he can tell her and Aunt Marion himself; and if he doesn’t come it won’t be any worse for me to tell them a few days from now than right off this minute.”
It was so forlorn an Ethel Blue who dragged herself through the preparations for the Columbus Day entertainment, that Ethel Brown could not help noticing the melancholy air that hung over her usually smiling face. Ethel Blue would make no explanation to her cousin, nor would she tell her aunt anything more than the reassuring words that she was perfectly well. They gave up trying to make her talk about herself, trusting to time to bring its own healing.
No letter came from her father announcing his acceptance of his sister Louise’s invitation, nor did another letter reach Ethel Blue. She was inclined to make a grievance of this until it occurred to her that she was not likely to hear until she replied to her father’s announcement of his proposed marriage.
“It’s a serious thing and I ought to answer his letter right off,” her conscience told her, “but I can’t say I’m glad and I don’t want to say I’m not glad. I’ll wait until after the twelfth, any way.”
Her feelings of selfishness and uncertainty made her a miserable girl during the interval.