“I wrote to your aunt Maria about her. The letter I got this morning was in reply to mine. She writes very brusquely—she is even ill-mannered—but she says she is perfectly willing for Evelyn to go there and board. I will pay four dollars a week—that is a large price for a child—and I knew you would love to have her.”
“Yes, I should; I don't turn my back upon my own flesh and blood,” Maria said, abruptly. “I guess I shall be glad to have her, poor little thing! with her father dead and her mother forsaking her.”
“I think you must be very much like your aunt Maria,” said Ida, in a cool, disagreeable voice. “I would fight against it, if I were you, Maria. It is not interesting, such a way as hers. It is especially not interesting to gentlemen. Gentlemen never like girls who speak so quickly and emphatically. They like girls to be gentle.”
“I don't care what gentlemen think,” said Maria, “but I do care for my poor, forsaken little sister.” Maria's voice broke with rage and distress.
“You are exceedingly disagreeable, Maria,” said Ida, with the radiant air of one who realizes her own perfect agreeableness.
Maria's lip curled. She said nothing.
“Evelyn's wardrobe is in perfect order for the summer,” said Ida. “Of course she can wear her white frocks in warm weather, and she has her black silk frocks and coat. I have plenty of black sash ribbons for her to wear with her white frocks. You will see to it that she always wears a black sash with a white frock, I hope, Maria. I should not like people in Amity to think I was lacking in respect to your father's memory.”
“Yes, I will be sure that Evelyn wears a black sash with a white frock,” replied Maria, in a bitter voice.
She rose abruptly and left the room. Up in her own chamber she threw herself face downward upon her bed, and wept the tears of one who is oppressed and helpless at the sight of wrong and disloyalty to one beloved. Maria hardly thought of Evelyn in her own personality at all. She thought of her as her dead father's child, whose mother was going away and leaving her within less than three weeks after her father's death. She lost sight of her own happiness in having the child with her, in the bitter reflection over the disloyalty to her father.
“She never cared at all for father,” she muttered to herself—“never at all; and now she does not really care because he is gone. She is perfectly delighted to be free, and have money enough to go to Europe, although she tries to hide it.”