"No, I don't want to. You can send them to me, if I need anything. I never want to go back to that house again as long as I live!"
"Well, if you feel that way——"
"You mean I ought to go back, so people won't talk, so they won't suspect anything?"
"I didn't mean any such thing! People don't suspect you of anything. Get that idea out of your head!"
"I don't see why they shouldn't!" she retorted, cynically. She was so unhappy, so abrupt and almost brutal, that Emily forgot her good resolutions, after she was in bed that night, and just wept. She had to go home without her child. In spite of all that she had planned to prevent such a climax, Martha hated that house now more vindictively than her mother had ever hated it. It wasn't Bob, either, that had driven her away from it; it wasn't Bob that had alienated her from her mother; it was just luck, it was fate. There was no appeal. "It's because I stood by her through all this that she can't stand the sight of me now!" Emily wept. "She's left me. She's going to a hotel in Chicago alone, to get away from me."
The day of their departure Martha was all but intolerably irritable. Emily's patience was almost at an end. She wasn't sure but that her daughter needed at this late date a thoroughly good spanking; but she held her peace. It was fortunate indeed that Emily had cultivated a good grasp on the peace of her mind, for that day she clung to it desperately. And then it nearly got away from her, more than once. However, as they were getting into their train at New Orleans, Martha began, abruptly:
"Look here, mother, it does make me sore to have you act as if I couldn't go to a hotel and take care of myself without you. Don't you think I've learned my lesson yet? Do you think I'm as much of a fool yet as I was last summer? What can hurt a girl alone in a hotel but men? I'm as safe as if I was in a desert, or locked in a cell. If all the men in Chicago were on the bridge, and I got a chance, I'd push them into the river, filthy little rats! I'd watch them sink. I should think you'd understand that by now. But you've been good to me, I know that. And if it will make you any happier, I'll go to the Y.W.C.A. and stay there till I get a flat. Does that satisfy you?"
It was so magnificent a concession that Emily blinked. "Oh yes, I think that would be much better. I'd like that, Martha."
"All right, then. I won't like it; lots of old cats there; but I don't want you to be worrying about me. I can take care of myself, I should hope."