"Did I tell you, mammie, I met Eve the other day? She's given up New York. Her father isn't well and she's going to stay in Chicago. She's coming down for a week-end soon, if he's better."
And when the neighbors would be gone she would run and give her mother gloating hugs, which asked as plainly as her voice could have spoken, "Don't I just get it across?"
Emily had asked, afterwards: "Did you really meet Eve? When?"
And she pretended to be indignant. "Did I meet her? I like your nerve! Do you suppose I'm not telling you the truth? She is coming down to see you. She said to me, right out, as soon as I saw her, 'Are you still sore about—that?' I just said: 'About what? Where've you been all the time? Why don't you write mother oftener? She wants to see you. Come on down with me.' This was at the station, mammie, just when I was coming home the other day. If she comes down here to stay with us, what can anybody say about——?"
She held the situation in a tight grasp now. If any minute of those busy days she had suffered one pang, remembering the desperate Christmas a year ago, she had never once given a sign of it. Since the day of her first accusation of her mother she had avoided the subject of her paternity excessively. Emily, too, had been afraid of it. She had told Martha firmly that she was not going to Chicago to live with her. Martha, for fear she might make explanations, had not argued the subject very far.
"I never would be content to live in Chicago, you know that, Martha. Our roots are here; I'm too old to be transplanted. I won't leave this house."
"But you get bored to death, mammie. You want to shriek sometimes. You said you did yourself that night, at the doctor's. I hate to go away and leave you here."
"Stay here then. This is your home."
"No. I've got to do something. It's all right here, when there's a party on, or something. But I couldn't stand it all the time. I'd get to scrapping with dad, you know I would."
The very mention of Bob brought up possibilities of uncomfortable remarks.