“When?”
Strong walls closing round about her, closing in, nearer and nearer; so near, so close, so tight, that she could hardly breathe, hardly think. “When—when—when I’m twenty, Luke!”
“The day you’re twenty?”
“The day—I’m twenty!”
He released her, after a long moment, and flung himself out of the office, and Glen dropped unsteadily into her chair. Presently, however, there came a distinct sense of relief. It was settled, then. On her twentieth birthday. It put a period to evasions and delays. On the day that she was twenty, she would marry Luke, keep her word, please her father.
Meanwhile, in her greater leisure, she went into the Tollivers’ home and others of its sort and tried faithfully to water where the doctor had planted, in spite of stony soil. Gloriana-Virginia was ailing, and Glen tried first to handle her case from the angle of the mill.
“Luke,” she said earnestly, waylaying the superintendent in the hall, “I think Glory should be laid off for a month. She’s so miserable——”
He nodded, frowning. “Looks no worse than she usually does—always was a pindling young one, but she’s pretty tough and wiry, and she’s a good hand. I’d hate to lay her off now, with these rush orders coming in—she keeps the other kids hustling, too.” Then, at the unhappiness in her face—“Just wait till I get the reins in my own hands, Glen! We’ll make a model mill out of the Altonia! You wait!”
“But Glory can’t wait,” the girl was mutinous. “Surely Mr. Carey——”
“You think you know old Carey, but you don’t,” he cut in harshly. “Mighty soft and mealy-mouthed with you, because he liked your father, but with me, he’s always putting on the screws. No use your naming it to him. He’d say—‘Yes—lay her off! Give ’em all a month on full pay’—to you, and next day he’d give me the wink to put ’em back.”