“Nearly time for lunch, Cecily. How are you coming on? Is there anything I can do to help you?” She spoke as if Cecily were packing a trunk.
“No, thank you, Della.”
“Can I see?”
There was no proper reason for refusal, but it was hard to let her see. Hastily selecting those souvenirs of the first marriage of her mother, Cecily pushed the collection of other jewelry over to Della. Della gasped.
“What a lot! Are those real pearls? And you get everything! Of course you’re awfully sad, Cecily, but you certainly are a lucky girl to get all these lovely things.”
Cecily did not answer.
“It’s funny your mother didn’t make a will. She was awfully nice to me always. I guess she was glad to have me take Walter in hand and get him out of any wild ways. Mrs. Allenby was saying the other day——”
“Was saying something about my mother?”
“Oh, I forgot you don’t like her very well. I guess she’s hardly your type. She’s so gay. But she’s awfully well liked and even if her family doesn’t amount to much she always admits it. I was so surprised the night you told everybody that her cousin was your cook. Ellen’s back with you, isn’t she? Fliss isn’t hiding it, anyway. She tells it in such a funny way.”
Cecily could imagine that. She could guess how Fliss’s sharp tongue could make ridicule of Cecily out of the fact that Cecily had tried to ridicule her.