“I told him so, my dear, but he would not believe me; he just maintained it to my face that it was too much for you, and your health was beginning to fail.”
“What would he mean by that?” said Susie, sitting up very upright on her chair. A shadow came over her brightness. “Oh, I hope he has not got any new idea in his head,” she cried.
“Maybe he will be thinking of a governess for the little ones, Susie.”
“It might be that,” she acknowledged in subdued tones. “And then,” she added, with again a sudden laugh, “I heard that woman—no, no, I never meant to speak of her so—I heard Mrs Ainslie saying to him it would be a good thing. I would rather not have the easement than get it through her hands.”
“Oh fie! Susie, fie! she would have no ill motive: you must not take such things into your head.”
“It is she that makes me feel as if it were too much,” cried Susie, “coming in at all hours following me about the house. I get so tired of her that I am tired of everything. I could just dance at the sight of her: she puts me out of my senses; and always pitying me that want none of her pity! It must be kindness, I suppose,” said Susie, grudgingly; “but then I wish she would not be so kind.” After this there was a pause. The talk came to an end all at once. Mrs Ainslie and her doings dropped out of it as if she had gone behind a veil; and Susie looked in her old friend’s face, with the tenderest of inquiring looks, a question that needed not to be spoken.
“No word still, no word?” she rather looked than said.
“Never a word: not one, not one!” the elder woman replied.
Susie put her head down on Mrs Ogilvy’s knee, and her cheek upon her friend’s hand, and then gave way to a sudden outburst of silent tears, sobbing a little, like a child. Mrs Ogilvy shed no tear. She patted the bowed head softly with her hand, as if she had been consoling a child. “The time’s very long,” she said,—“very long, and never a word.”
After a while Susie raised her head. “I must, perhaps, not be very well after all,” she said, with an attempt at a smile; “or why should I cry like that? It is just that I could not help thinking and minding. It was about this time of the year——”