“Oh!” she whispered, “what a wicked girl I am! I’m glad to see mother, but—I—don’t want to come home. I didn’t know it would be as bad as this.— What shall I do? What shall I do?”
“An invitation for the Jenkinses—for the 14th,” Mrs. Ruan said, triumphantly, coming into the dining-room one morning.
Bridget sat at the table writing. She had been home about three months. Mr. Ruan, who had not yet gone to business, lay back in his arm-chair before the fire, with the paper. His coat hung over the back of the chair; he usually preferred to sit in his shirt-sleeves when he was off duty.
Bridget looked up. She frowned a little, began to speak, and was silent, biting the end of her pen.
“Well, what is it?” Mrs. Ruan’s voice changed at once into an irritable, complaining key. “You don’t want to go, I suppose?”
“Don’t want to go?—why not?” exclaimed Mr. Ruan, looking up from his paper. “Aren’t the Jenkinses good enough for her? You don’t seem to ’ave made so many friends at school, my girl; so if you’re not invited away to stay with swells, you must put up with the people ’ere, or go without.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to go,” Bridget replied, turning away her head.
“Didn’t say. Of course not; it’s your manner,” retorted her mother. “I thought you’d come back more fit to ornament society, that I did,” she said bitterly. “Instead of which you seem to care for no gayeties like other girls—nothing but those everlasting books. I’m sure—”
“That ’ull do, mother,” her husband broke in, raising his voice. “She’ll go—that’s all about it—and take some music, can’t you?” he added angrily, turning to Bridget, “and let them see you can play. Hang it all! I expect old Joe Jenkins is laughing in his sleeve, to think of all the money I’ve spent on you. A ’undred and twenty a year! and what’s the good of it?”