Mollie Defends her Uncle.
Mr Farrell walked to the door, and shut it behind him. Everyone stood still, staring at Mollie, and Mollie stared ruefully back.
“Oh!” she cried breathlessly, “oh!” and pressed both palms to her now scorching cheeks. “I’ve never been snubbed like that in all my life.” Then suddenly she laughed a bright, sweet-hearted laugh, utterly free from envy. “I’m nowhere, Ruth, when you are concerned; but there’s one comfort, I can do as I like, and no one will interfere! If it is to be a choice between the two, I prefer freedom to riches.”
She left the room to make her way upstairs, and Jack crossed the hall by her side. He looked intently at her as he walked, and when their eyes met he said simply—
“You took that well—very well indeed! I congratulate you on your self-control. I could not have kept my temper as you did.”
“Oh, I don’t know!” returned Mollie easily. “I brought it on my own head. It was stupid to speak of myself at all; but just for the moment I couldn’t help feeling aggrieved, because, really and truly, I was in greater danger than she. Uncle Bernard is old, poor thing, and that makes him querulous.”
“It ought not to. I call that a very poor excuse. When a man gets to his age he ought surely to have learnt to be patient, even if he imagines himself provoked.”
“But he is ill as well. You say nothing about that. Should that make him patient too?”
“Certainly it should. Suffering has often a most ennobling effect.”
Mollie stood on the first step of the staircase, her arm on the banister, looking with a challenging smile into the proud self-confident face on a level with her own.