“Helen might,” replied Margaret. “I don’t quite know. I’d rather be left out of it myself.”
“Oh, I couldn’t work with Helen alone,” said Charles. “She would overrule me at every turn.”
“There you are!” Margaret put in. “It would be a beautiful idea, no doubt; but we should find it hard to agree.”
“Yet we ought to consider the plan before we ask any one else to do the book,” said Charles, looking at me as though for confirmation. He had been walking about while we talked, and now stood facing us from behind the library table.
“You certainly ought,” I agreed, rising to go.
A few days later I paid a visit to the Bradfords. Helen was alone. She received me graciously and spoke of her mother with much feeling and pride. Very soon, however, she turned the conversation to her sister.
“I’m troubled about Margaret,” she said. “You’ve seen her. I’d like to know exactly what you think. She seems to me to be on the edge of a nervous collapse, but she won’t see a doctor.”
“She is very tired, evidently,” I responded, “but I thought she had herself well in hand. Perhaps it may be a good thing for her to put through her plan of going to Italy.”
“Perhaps so. The poor child needs a rest, certainly. But I’m not at all sure that she ought to be allowed to go away by herself.” Helen Bradford eyed me significantly. “What worries me is her fixed idea that mother has somehow been unjust to her. It is almost insane, this idea, and it distresses me more than I can say. You see, I shouldn’t speak of it at all except that you have known her so long. You see how absurd the idea is. Margaret has had greater advantages from mother’s society than any one else, as you know. It was a great privilege.”
“Undoubtedly.” I could not bring myself to say more than that, for I had a swift vision of what forty-two years of constant association with Mrs. Longbow must have been like. “But the strain on her these last two months must have been very great.”