"You've got to write to me, Fred," Maitland charged her; "I haven't any relations—'no one to love me.' Do write me the news once in a while."
"You're off day after to-morrow?" she repeated, vaguely; it came over her, in the midst of that tense listening for the shuffling step on the stairs, that she would not see him again—he would go away, and she would not have had a word alone with him! She felt, suddenly, that she could not bear it. For a moment she forgot Mortimore. "If you don't go up-stairs and say how-do-you-do to Mother, Laura," she said, abruptly, "you'll get yourself disliked. And your mother is in the sitting-room, too." Even if Miss Carter and Morty appeared, she couldn't have Howard leave her like this!
Just for an instant, Laura's face changed; then she flung her head up, and said, "Oh, yes; I want to see Aunt Nelly. I'll be right back. (I'll give 'em a chance," she told herself, grimly.)
Up-stairs, she roamed about the sitting-room, sniffing at the hyacinths, and looking into the little, devout books, and even adding a piece or two to the picture puzzle on the table. Then she sympathized with Mrs. Payton's Christmas fatigue—"you oughtn't to give so many presents, Aunt Nelly!"
"Oh, my dear, it gets worse each year! People send me things, and of course I have to pay my debts. So tiresome."
"It's awful," said Laura; and straightened her mother's toque, and kissed her. "Darling, your hat is always crooked," she scolded, cuddling her cheek against her mother's. "Mama, we're going to have a suffrage parade, in April; will you carry a banner?"
"Oh, my dear!" Mrs. Payton protested. "One of those horrid parades here? I thought we would escape that!"
"Your father won't think of letting you walk in it, Laura," Mrs. Childs warned her, with amiably impersonal discouragement.
Laura's face sobered: "You make him let me, darling," she entreated.
Mrs. Payton looked at them enviously. Nobody hated those vulgar, muddy, unladylike parades more than she did, but she knew, in the bottom of her heart, that if Freddy had snuggled against her, as Laura snuggled up to Bessie, she would almost have walked in one herself!