He was going to lay down the law to her, was he, when he had never in his life laid down his work for an hour for her sake! Emily, that placid woman, for the third time in one evening, was ruffled and resentful. Johnnie had disturbed her. "That man" had annoyed her. And now, all of a sudden, Bob, who had never done anything but stand aside and watch her manage Martha, was going to take her in hand. He had literally had no time for the girl since she was born; and now he seemed to think she ought to listen to him.
She said nothing, being wise, and he went up to bed. The Wright girls came in, presently, with Johnnie and Chris Phillips, all of them together making a little eddying whirlpool of youth in the quiet room. Emily, moved by some instinct of security for Martha, called up to her to come down. "Oh," they said, "is Martha home?" Emily replied carelessly that they had picked her up near the bridge, and instantly she happened to look at Helen Wright. She had not been thinking of the effect of her remark, but she saw Helen wink—yes, undoubtedly just wink—at Johnnie, and she saw he didn't want to be winked at on the subject. She felt a sharp mistrust of that girl—her expressive, cynical face. What did she mean? Did she know with whom Martha had chosen to walk home? She thanked goodness that Helen Wright wasn't staying long. She didn't like her.
Martha had only tarried a minute—long enough to have paid, perhaps, her tribute to the mirror, but by the time she came down the boys had left. Johnnie said it would be a change to go once before he got sent home. Martha didn't deign to notice his absence. She talked serenely to her guests.
But Emily, in her bed, remembered, sighing more than once, how that horrid Helen had sat looking at Martha, with cynical, initiated amusement. Perhaps that girl was encouraging her in her naughtiness. If Martha wasn't careful—and she probably wouldn't be—she would be getting into a horrible row with her father. That consummation Emily Kenworthy would do anything to avoid. If Bob "bawled her out" in the morning, the world underneath their feet would be splitting. Martha and that odious stranger would be on one side, and Bob would be on the other. And Emily—well, there was never a moment's doubt in her mind where she would be!
She remembered, indignant at the thought of it, that perfectly absurd situation of her friend, Mrs. Harding, whose daughter had married, to the utter rage and final alienation of her father. One day, months after that, Mrs. Harding had come creeping into the Kenworthys' house, almost a stranger then, and had begged for the loan of two hundred dollars, just begged for it, ashamed and whispering, because her daughter was ill, and without a penny, in a rooming house demanding its rent. A girl friend of hers had seen her there, and had come back to urge her mother to help her. In all her life Emily had never had to consider the state of a woman living comfortably without one cent of her own to put a finger on. "If I were you," she had exclaimed to Mrs. Harding, "I would go straight to her. I would bring her home, or take her some place and take care of her." But Mrs. Harding dared not defy her husband. He was an old man, and delicate, and it might kill him. And Emily had been on the point of saying: "I don't believe it! And if it does, he deserves it!" She had entered heartily into that conspiracy, and it had all turned out so well, and the two women had become friends. Yet Emily essentially disapproved of her "kowtowing" to her husband. There would be nothing like that in her house! If any great, deep chasm was to come splitting across the ground on which the Kenworthy family stood, Emily was going to be on the side of her daughter! Was it likely that she would give up that Jim Kenworthy—that she would have allowed her dear lover to go away to die alone—for that child's sake, and now give up the child merely for Bob Kenworthy?
"Bob," she said, emphatically.
"What's the matter?" He was sleepy.
"You aren't to 'settle' Martha in the morning! You are to leave her to me!"
"What?"
"I say you aren't to scold Martha in the morning about—that man. I've talked to her about it, and that's enough."