“I don’t know. You know how doctors are. They say I’ve got a growth. Now they want to operate on me, but I’m afraid of that and I don’t doubt but that it’s all foolishness. I’m trying a new cure now—perhaps you’ve read about it——” She droned on in the unceasing manner of the patent medicine addict. Cecily listened. She had not yet had a chance to explain her visit, and she was full of crowding thoughts. So this was where Fliss had lived. No wonder it had been an escape to marry Matthew. This mother—but the poor woman was very ill. There were terrible pain ravages on her face. Hadn’t Ellen said cancer? But where was Ellen? And was it possible that Fliss had bribed her to get her there? Or was there really a relationship?
Just at that moment Ellen came in. She looked astonished, but, like Mrs. Horton, was too simple to be much disturbed.
“Why, Mrs. Harrison!”
Cecily shook hands with her. “I didn’t know that Mrs. Horton was your cousin, Ellen.”
“No; I guess I didn’t happen to mention it,” said Ellen.
Not a word of Fliss. There was no need.
“I do hope you haven’t come to try to get Ellen back,” said Mrs. Horton. “I don’t see how I could get along at all without her.”
“We all need Ellen,” Cecily answered.
“Well, of course, being a relative and all, I’d sooner have her with me than a nurse. Those trained nurses are awful high and mighty. And of course Ellen don’t really need to work out at all now. Now that Fliss is married, I tell her she could always have Fliss’s room.”
“You must miss your daughter.”