"Isn"t he?"
Di sprang up. "Aunt Lulu," she said, "you"re a funny person to be telling _me_ what to do."
Lulu said, flushing: "I love you just the same as if I was married happy, in a home."
"Well, you aren"t!" cried Di cruelly, "and I"m going to do just as I think best."
Lulu thought this over, her look grave and sad. She tried to find something to say. "What do people say to people," she wondered, "when it"s like this?"
"Getting married is for your whole life," was all that came to her.
"Yours wasn"t," Di flashed at her.
Lulu"s colour deepened, but there seemed to be no resentment in her. She must deal with this right--that was what her manner seemed to say. And how should she deal?
"Di," she cried, "come back with me--and wait till mamma and papa get home."
"That"s likely. They say I"m not to be married till I"m twenty-one."
"Well, but how young that is!"
"It is to you."
"Di! This is wrong--it _is_ wrong."
"There"s nothing wrong about getting married--if you stay married."
"Well, then it can"t be wrong to let them know."
"It isn"t. But they"d treat me wrong. They"d make me stay at home. And I won"t stay at home--I won"t stay there. They act as if I was ten years old."
Abruptly in Lulu"s face there came a light of understanding.
"Why, Di," she said, "do you feel that way too?"
Di missed this. She went on:
"I"m grown up. I feel just as grown up as they do. And I"m not allowed to do a thing I feel. I want to be away--I will be away!"
"I know about that part," Lulu said.
She now looked at Di with attention. Was it possible that Di was suffering in the air of that home as she herself suffered? She had not thought of that. There Di had seemed so young, so dependent, so--asquirm. Here, by herself, waiting for Bobby, in the Hess House at Millton, she was curiously adult. Would she be adult if she were let alone?
"You don"t know what it"s like," Di cried, "to be hushed up and laughed at and paid no attention to, everything you say."
"Don"t I?" said Lulu. "Don"t I?"
She was breathing quickly and looking at Di. If _this_ was why Di was leaving home....
"But, Di," she cried, "do you love Bobby Larkin?"
By this Di was embarra.s.sed. "I"ve got to marry somebody," she said, "and it might as well be him."
"But is it him?"
"Yes, it is," said Di. "But," she added, "I know I could love almost anybody real nice that was nice to me." And this she said, not in her own right, but either she had picked it up somewhere and adopted it, or else the terrible modernity and honesty of her day somehow spoke through her, for its own. But to Lulu it was as if something familiar turned its face to be recognised.
"Di!" she cried.
"It"s true. You ought to know that." She waited for a moment. "You did it," she added. "Mamma said so."
At this onslaught Lulu was stupefied. For she began to perceive its truth.
"I know what I want to do, I guess," Di muttered, as if to try to cover what she had said.
Up to that moment, Lulu had been feeling intensely that she understood Di, but that Di did not know this. Now Lulu felt that she and Di actually shared some unsuspected sisterhood. It was not only that they were both badgered by Dwight. It was more than that. They were two women. And she must make Di know that she understood her.
"Di," Lulu said, breathing hard, "what you just said is true, I guess.
Don"t you think I don"t know. And now I"m going to tell you--"
She might have poured it all out, claimed her kinship with Di by virtue of that which had happened in Savannah, Georgia. But Di said:
"Here come some ladies. And goodness, look at the way you look!"
Lulu glanced down. "I know," she said, "but I guess you"ll have to put up with me."
The two women entered, looked about with the complaisance of those who examine a hotel property, find criticism inc.u.mbent, and have no errand.
These two women had outdressed their occasion. In their presence Di kept silence, turned away her head, gave them to know that she had nothing to do with this blue cotton person beside her. When they had gone on, "What do you mean by my having to put up with you?" Di asked sharply.
"I mean I"m going to stay with you."
Di laughed scornfully--she was again the rebellious child. "I guess Bobby"ll have something to say about that," she said insolently.
"They left you in my charge."
"But I"m not a baby--the idea, Aunt Lulu!"
"I"m going to stay right with you," said Lulu. She wondered what she should do if Di suddenly marched away from her, through that bright lobby and into the street. She thought miserably that she must follow.
And then her whole concern for the ethics of Di"s course was lost in her agonised memory of her terrible, broken shoes.
Di did not march away. She turned her back squarely upon Lulu, and looked out of the window. For her life Lulu could think of nothing more to say. She was now feeling miserably on the defensive.
They were sitting in silence when Bobby Larkin came into the room.
Four Bobby Larkins there were, in immediate succession.
The Bobby who had just come down the street was distinctly perturbed, came hurrying, now and then turned to the left when he met folk, glanced sidewise here and there, was altogether anxious and ill at ease.