“Oh, I don’t worry,” she answered. “If she is going to presume to criticise you, I don’t want her under my roof; the sooner she leaves the better!”
“Spitfire!” he told her, kissing her pretty hand, and forgetting all about his sister’s absurdity, and the strike, and the men and women shivering in the tenements down in the miserable mill town.
But he remembered it all the next morning at the breakfast-table, for Lydia Eaton’s white face was too striking to escape comment. Mrs. Blair was not present, preferring to be, at what she called the “brutal hour of eight,” in her own room, with a tray and her maid and a novel.
“What’s the matter?” Mr. Blair said kindly. “Are you ill, Lily?”
“It’s what I told you last night, Robert,” she said nervously.
The solemn Samuel, all ears, but looking perfectly deaf, brought a dish to his master’s elbow. Robert Blair closed his lips with a snap. Then he said,—
“Please make no reference to that folly before Eleanor.”
But of course it was only a respite. The folly had to be repeated to Eleanor—discussed, argued, denounced, until the whole atmosphere of the house was charged with excitement.
Through it all Lydia Eaton came and went, and did her packing.
“Well,” her sister-in-law said contemptuously, “perhaps you’ll tell me how you mean to feed Esther and Silas? You have a right to starve yourself, but I have some feeling for the children!”