“I have no desire to correct you.”
After nipping the thread with her teeth and drawing a deep, wavering sigh, Mrs. Sartwell said:
“In every household, Edna, some one must command and others obey. When my time comes I shall gladly lay down the burden of what poor authority is delegated to me, but until that time comes I shall be mistress in my own house. Your father freely, and of his own choice, gave me that authority, and he, not you, is the proper person to revoke it, if it pleases him to do so. I shall therefore say nothing more until he returns. Then he must choose between us. If you are to be mistress here, I shall bow my head without a word, and leave this house, praying that peace and every blessing may remain within it.”
Something of the self-sacrificing resignation breathing through these measured words must have touched the hardened heart of the girl, for she buried her face in her hands and began to weep,—a certain sign of defeat. But she evidently determined not to give her antagonist the satisfaction fairly won by so admirable a dissertation upon the correct conduct of a well-ordered household.
“It is always poor father!” she sobbed. “With all the trouble and anxiety already on his mind, he must be worried when he comes home by our miserable squabbles.”
“I never squabble, Edna. Neither do I ever use such an undignified word. Where you got it, I’m sure I do not know, but it was not from me. If you wish your father not to be troubled, then you should act so that it would not be necessary to appeal to him. It is no wish of mine to add to his cares,—far otherwise. Are you ready to obey me now?”
“Yes.”
The girl rose and went rather uncertainly to the door, her eyes filled with tears.
“You have not kissed me good-night, Edna.”
She kissed her step-mother on the cheek and went to her room, flinging herself, dressed as she was, on her bed, sobbing. Yet she listened for that step on the gravel which did not come. At last she rose, arranged her hair for the night, and bathed her face, so that her father, if he came home and saw her, should not know she had been crying. Wrapping herself in her dressing-gown, she sat by the window and listened intently and anxiously. It was after midnight when the last train came in, and some minutes later her quick ear heard the long-expected step far down the street; but it was not the quick, nervous tread she was accustomed to. It was the step of a tired man. She thought of softly calling to him from the window, but did not. Holding her door ajar, she heard the murmur of her step-mother’s voice and occasionally the shorter, gruffer note of her father’s evidently monosyllabic replies. After what seemed an interminable time, her stepmother came up alone, and the door of her room closed.