Laura Welman said shrewdly:
“You’ve been worrying, haven’t you? About the future. You leave it to me, my dear. I’ll see to it that you shall have the means to be independent and take up a profession. But be patient for a little—it means too much to me to have you here.”
“Oh, Mrs. Welman, of course—of course! I wouldn’t leave you for the world. Not if you want me—”
“I do want you…” The voice was unusually deep and full. “You’re—you’re quite like a daughter to me, Mary. I’ve seen you grow up here at Hunterbury from a little toddling thing—seen you grow into a beautiful girl… I’m proud of you, child. I only hope I’ve done what was best for you.”
Mary said quickly:
“If you mean that your having been so good to me and having educated me above—well, above my station—if you think it’s made me dissatisfied or—or—given me what Father calls fine-lady ideas, indeed that isn’t true. I’m just ever so grateful, that’s all. And if I’m anxious to start earning my living, it’s only because I feel it’s right that I should, and not—and not—well, do nothing after all you’ve done for me. I—I shouldn’t like it to be thought that I was sponging on you.”
Laura Welman said, and her voice was suddenly sharp-edged:
“So that’s what Gerrard’s been putting into your head? Pay no attention to your father, Mary; there never has been and never will be any question of your sponging on me! I’m asking you to stay here a little longer solely on my account. Soon it will be over… If they went the proper way about things, my life could be ended here and now—none of this long-drawn-out tomfoolery with nurses and doctors.”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Welman, Dr. Lord says you may live for years.”
“I’m not at all anxious to, thank you! I told him the other day that in a decently civilized state, all there would be to do would be for me to intimate to him that I wished to end it, and he’d finish me off painlessly with some nice drug. ‘And if you’d any courage, Doctor,’ I said, ‘you’d do it, anyway!’”
Mary cried:
“Oh! What did he say?”
“The disrespectful young man merely grinned at me, my dear, and said he wasn’t going to risk being hanged. He said, ‘If you’d left me all your money, Mrs. Welman, that would be different, of course!’ Impudent young jackanapes! But I like him. His visits do me more good than his medicines.”
“Yes, he’s very nice,” said Mary. “Nurse O’Brien thinks a lot of him and so does Nurse Hopkins.”
Mrs. Welman said:
“Hopkins ought to have more sense at her age. As for O’Brien, she simpers and says, ‘Oh, doctor,’ and tosses those long streamers of hers whenever he comes near her.”
“Poor Nurse O’Brien.”
Mrs. Welman said indulgently:
“She’s not a bad sort, really, but all nurses annoy me; they always will think that you’d like a ‘nice cup of tea’ at five in the morning!” She paused. “What’s that? Is it the car?”
Mary looked out of the window.
“Yes, it’s the car. Miss Elinor and Mr. Roderick have arrived.”
II
Mrs. Welman said to her niece:
“I’m very glad, Elinor, about you and Roddy.”
Elinor smiled at her.
“I thought you would be, Aunt Laura.”
The older woman said, after a moment’s hesitation:
“You do—care about him, Elinor?”
Elinor’s delicate brows lifted.
“Of course.”