“Yes; how can I fail to understand? It is just as I thought.”
The silence that followed was not comfortable and Miss Frean added:
“Suppose we don’t talk about ourselves, Tory. Please tell me about Kara. I am deeply interested and not so surprised as most people by her attitude toward Mr. Moore.”
“Well, I am surprised and, more than that, I am awfully annoyed with Kara. Not that it makes the slightest difference to her. You know Kara is one of the quietly firm people whom one cannot change. She must see for herself.
“She has decided to accept the fact that Mr. Moore is her guardian in the sense that her mother begged this favor of him many years ago, not otherwise. She has declined to allow him legally to adopt her. She is friendly but does not wish him to do anything for her. She says that he will not find her congenial and that as soon as she is well enough she wants to come back to the Gray House on the Hill until she has finished school. Nothing will induce her to give up the idea that she wishes to make her own living as soon as she is strong enough. In the meantime she is studying stenography whenever she has any leisure. And actually Mr. Hammond and Dr. McClain and Uncle Richard uphold her. They say they admire her spirit. Mr. Hammond has given Kara a typewriter which she was at least gracious enough to accept. She has taken nothing from poor Mr. Moore, who wants to be as nice as possible, except books and candy and flowers. She has condescended to drive with him a few times. I really think Kara is partly obstinate because I used to tell her she would be sure to develop a romantic history. She insisted I wanted her to have a rich guardian and to grow up and marry him like the sentimental stories of girls in orphan asylums the world over. So now Kara, who might have a rich guardian, repudiates him!”
Memory Frean laughed.
“Well, I must say I too admire Kara’s fortitude. And we all suffer a little from your romantic tendencies, Tory. By and by Kara will become more friendly. Naturally she is more concerned with getting well at present.”
“If she does not recover in New York, Mr. Moore has spoken of taking Kara and Lance to Europe so that Lance can study music and Kara see what can be done for her. If she does not get well I don’t see how she can refuse this. I believe Kara would accept anything to make her walk again, even if she insisted on earning the money in the future and returning it to Mr. Moore.
“Isn’t it nearly teatime, Memory? I see several of the girls walking toward the evergreen cottage.”
The arrangement had been that after a walk to the woods the Girl Scouts and their Captain would have tea inside their cabin with Philip Winslow, the artist, who had been living there during the winter and been added as a member of the Girl Scout Council.