"I suppose I must," she said. "Indeed, there is no other way for me at present; only—I am to graduate, you know, in a few days, and I thought—but of course I ought not, contrary to Aunt Mamie's wishes. But I do not know what she wants me to do for the summer. She has not seemed to remember it. I have always spent the summer vacations with her."
"You are not to forecast anxieties about the summer," Mrs. Burnham said, trying to make her voice sound cheery and free from all anxiety, though it struck her like a physical pain, the fact that she could not say to this girl who was growing dearer to her with every passing day, "Come home with me, child, of course;" that she could never invite her to her home, and could never explain to her why she must not. She must simply be silent and trust to Maybelle's shrewd guessing that there were reasons why this new friend of hers did not feel at home in her own home, and was not at liberty to take her friends there.
It was true that summer was upon them, and the air of the boarding school was athrob with the plans of eager girls getting ready for the home-going. Maybelle was almost the only one who had not some sort of home to plan for. And yet Maybelle was to graduate! If only Mrs. Burnham could say to her, "Come, we will make home together, and you may do for me all that your heart prompts." There were hours when she was tempted to do something of the kind. But her words to Maybelle revealed none of her pain.
"There are lovely schemes maturing for the summer. 'Good times,' my dear, and unlike the illustrious Gloriana McQuirk you are 'in 'em.' I am not to divulge them before the appointed hour, but I empower you to say to those envious schoolgirls that your summer plans are a delicious secret even from yourself, being locked in the heart of that blessed little schemer, Mrs. Roberts."
Maybelle's face was still serious, but, after a moment, she laughed softly.
"I am the strangest girl!" she said. "I don't think there can be another girl in the world who lives my kind of life. I have not what Madame Sternheim calls a 'relative' this side heaven to care what becomes of me, and I have the dearest company of people, on whom, according to Madame again, I have not the shadow of a claim, who never weary of doing for me! What more, for instance, could you and that dear Mrs. Roberts and those girls and boys of hers do for me, even though I had that potent charm, some of 'the same blood' in my veins? And yet, do you know, selfish creature that I am, the Madame has so instilled her principles into me that if I only had a sister or brother of my very own to love and care for, I think I could give up joyfully all other luxuries."
"Are you not forgetting your aunts in England, my dear?"
Maybelle shook her head and spoke resolutely. "I want to forget them; I do not claim them as aunts of mine." Then, in response to Ruth's look that might have meant reproach, she added:—
"They did not like mamma, Mrs. Burnham, and they were not good to her. Papa told me as much as that. He said she was young, and away from all her home friends and unhappy, and they led her a hard life. Papa could not help feeling hard toward them for that. It was the reason why he never went to England again after Grandmother died. He took me to see Grandmother, did you know that? But she did not seem like a grandmother. She wasn't dear, you know, and sweet, like the grandmothers in stories, and in real life too,—some of the girls at school have lovely ones,—but mine was stately and cold. She and my two aunts used to talk about mamma right before me.
"'She looks like her,' one of them said, with a strong emphasis on the 'her' a contemptuous emphasis it seemed to me. And the other aunt replied, 'But she isn't like her in disposition, apparently.' Then Grandmother said quickly, 'Heaven forbid!' Could one love people who talked in that way before a child about her dear dead mother? Not that they meant me to understand," she added thoughtfully, after a moment, as one who must do full justice even to one's enemies. "I don't think they did; they were the kind of people who think that a child is deaf and blind and stupid. I understood hints and shrugs of the shoulders and curls of the lip and exclamations a great deal better than they thought I did. I have no relatives, dear Mrs. Burnham, that I care for, but I have friends whom I love with every bit of me. May I ask just one little question?—and you need not answer it if it is part of the secret. Do the summer plans include you? Because if they don't, and there could be a way for me to have you for just a little piece of the summer, I—"