“I should be glad if you would speak to your mamma with more, more——”
“Politeness,” suggested Bessie, finding Mrs. Dudley pause for want of a suitable word.
“Not exactly politeness, but respect,” said Heather; “you know, dear, she is your mother, and you ought to——”
“Please, stop,” entreated Bessie. “I will strive to do what you ask for your sake; if I cannot be good for that, nothing can make me good. You were very fond of your mother, I suppose—very tender towards her—very dutiful, no doubt?”
“I hope I was,” Heather answered, in that low tone in which women talk of the dead whom they have loved.
“And she was very fond of you?”
“My dear child, what a question! of course she was.”
“Well, supposing she had not been fond of you, nor you of her, perhaps even you might not have found it in the least degree easier to be dutiful and tender than I do?”
“But you must be fond of her,” Heather asserted.
“I do not see any must in the matter; I never asked her to bring me into the world. If she had consulted me, I should decidedly have preferred being left out of it. Well, then, since to please herself she did bring me into the world, what has she done for me? My brothers have had all her care and attention; she married young, as you know, and to some women it does not seem a very agreeable thing to have a great girl treading on their heels, and calling them mother. She dressed me as a child long after I was a girl;—when she could not help herself, and had to acknowledge that I was growing up, she sent me from the nursery to school, and kept me there till the state of the domestic finances compelled my return; since which time, the one object, aim, and end of her life has been to drive me to marry somebody—to get rid of a child she never liked.”