“I’m not,” I said, but of course there is no doubt about it, one does love people more in evening dress and less in a nightgown.
“Did George ever see you like this?” I asked.
“Often. Is he gone to bed?”
“Yes, with a headache.”
She took a candle and we went on tiptoe to his room, Mother first taking off her high-heeled shoes, for they would tap on the parquet and make a noise. George was asleep. He had eaten one of his bananas, and the other was still by the side of his bed.
“Hold the candle, Tempe!” Mother said quickly. It was that she might go down on her knees beside George. She then buried her head in the quilt and cried.
“Oh, George, I am doing it for the best—I am, I am! For my poor neglected boy—my poor Ben.”
She upset and puzzled me so by alluding to Ben, after my conversation with him that very evening, that I dropped a blob of candle-grease on the sheet near George’s arm, and I was so afraid I had awakened him, that I at once shut the stable-door—I mean blew out the candle and made a horrible smell. Mother jumped off her knees as frightened as I was—Father Mack hasn’t cured George quite of swearing!—and we made a clean bolt of it back to her room, where she re-lit the candle and began to get out of her dress as quickly as she could, while I sat in a honeypot on the floor, and kept my nightgown well round my legs not to catch cold, and talked to her nicely, so as not to startle her.
“Of course, Mother dear, you are doing it for the best, even if it is to run away.”
“Run away! Who says I am going to run away?”