“And so that’s how you met with this trouble? You wanted to spite your mother again.”
“Not altogether. It wasn’t mother especially just then. It was everything mother stood for. He flung at me, ‘Oh, you’re one of those “nice” girls, are you?’ and it made me wild. I proposed to show him I wasn’t one of those ‘nice’ girls and the sky was the limit. He couldn’t fling any such insult in my teeth as that. Then I didn’t care what happened.”
“You don’t love him?”
“I didn’t say so.”
“Well, would you marry him?”
“I don’t know. Oh, Madge, I don’t know anything—where I am—what I want to do—what I ought to do—what’s to become of me. I guess my folks are bothering most. Dad’s hard-boiled in lots of ways. Yet all the same, I don’t fear him half so much as I do mother. It’ll scandalize her so she’s going to make my life a misery. And not half so much because I’ve done any moral wrong as because what I’ve done isn’t sanctioned by the Best People. Damn the Best People! Who are they? Where are they? What are they—that they should injure me so?”
“Calm yourself, child. Then it’s fright of your mother that’s bothering you most?”
“I guess so. Yes!”
“Then don’t be frightened any more. Because when your mother comes to Mount Hadley in the morning, I’ll take it upon myself to see her and explain everything away all right. As for yourself, my foster-mother is very sensible about such things. Perhaps that’s why I’ve come to look upon them so impersonally myself. I’ll go up and have a talk with mother. For a few months you can be our guest. When the crucial time comes, mother will arrange matters. We are going abroad this summer. In so far as any one, even your parents, need know, you are accompanying us as our guest. My mother won’t even ask who you are, if you don’t care for her to know; any name you wish to go by will be perfectly all right.”
“And my mother need never learn?”