During her speech Miss Patricia had drawn the younger woman into her room, closed the door behind her and was now gazing at her severely but it must be confessed solicitously as well.
“But I am not ill, Aunt Patricia,” Mrs. Burton protested as soon as she was allowed an opportunity to speak. “I only came in to have a talk with you about something important.”
Aunt Patricia’s bedroom was large and empty, for there was more space at the old farm house than furniture. A great old-fashioned French bed had been spared from the general wreckage and upon this Mrs. Burton seated herself, drawing her feet up under her and her lavender dressing gown about her, since with so little heat in the house the bedrooms were uncomfortably cold.
There was but one solitary stiff-backed chair, in which Miss Patricia sat perfectly erect.
“Why not come here and sit beside me? There is plenty of room, and you will be more comfortable,” Mrs. Burton urged.
Aunt Patricia shook her head.
“I am quite comfortable where I am. Moreover, Polly Burton, if I am an old woman and you no longer a young one, at the same time I am aware that you have every idea of trying to persuade me to some point of view of which you do not think I will approve. I have seen your methods before this evening. Thank you, I shall remain where I am.”
Mrs. Burton laughed.
Aunt Patricia did look so uncompromising in a hideous smoke-gray dressing gown made without any attempt at decorations. Her small knot of hair was screwed into a tight coil at the back of her head.
Mrs. Burton’s own hair had kept its beautiful dusky quality, it had the dark sheen of the hair of the mythical Irish fairies, for only in Anglo-Saxon countries are fairies of necessity fair. Tonight Mrs. Burton’s hair was unbound and hung about her shoulders as if she were a girl.