"It is very good of you to let me come," she said.
"But she must be over forty," Hugh told himself, "and her voice is young. So was his always." It was also very natural and moving and not untinged by what Miss Fowler called the Southern patois. "And her feet are young."
Mr. Fowler uttered another polite murmur. There was no help from that quarter. She made another start.
"It seemed to me—" she addressed Miss Fowler, who looked obdurate. She cast a helpless glance at the cat, who opened surprising topaz eyes and looked supercilious. Then she turned to Hugh. "It seemed to me," she said, steadily, "that I could make you understand—I mean I could express myself more clearly if I could see you, than I could by writing, but—it is rather difficult."
The overheated, inclement room waited. Hugh restrained his foot from twitching. Why didn't Aunt Maria say something? She was behaving abominably. She was still seething with her suppressed outburst like a tea-kettle under the cozy of civilization. And it was catching.
"I explained at the time, three years ago," Mrs. Shirley made the plunge, "why I took the—money at all." The hard word was out, and Hugh relaxed. "I don't know what you thought of me, but at the time it seemed like the mercy of Heaven. I had to educate the children. We were horribly poor. I was almost in despair. And I felt that if I could take it from any one I could take it from him …"
"Yes," said Hugh, unhappily. The depression that dropped on him at intervals seemed waiting to pounce. He glanced at his uncle's judicial mask, knowing utterly the distaste for sentimental encounters that it covered. He detested his aunt's aloofness. He was almost angry with this little woman's ingenuousness that put her so candidly at their cynical mercy.
"But now," she went on, "some land we have that seemed worth nothing at the time has become very valuable. The town grew out in that direction. And my eldest boy is doing very well indeed, and my daughter is studying for a library position."
"The short and simple annals of the poor," sighed Hugh to Hugh.
"And so," said little Mrs. Shirley, with astounding simplicity, "I came to ask you please to take it back again." She gave an involuntary sigh of relief, as though she had returned a rather valuable umbrella. Mr. Fowl's eyeglasses dropped from his nose as his eyebrows shot up.