“I expect you have accepted the family’s hostility to Mrs. Low, Lucy,” Arthur went on after a minute.
“I’ve hardly ever heard Mamma speak of her,” Lucy returned, her glance drooping before the bitter, slightly amused expression that crept into her father’s face.
“Mrs. Low is too big a woman for her environment. She’s got too much self-respect to be understood by the people in this place. It’s because she’s too bighearted to be prudent, she’s let herself be unpleasantly criticised!” Mr. Merwent’s manner was warm.
Lucy, surprised at her father’s outburst, stared at him in silence, her lips slightly parted. He rose from his chair and walked over to the open window. He stood there for a moment with his back turned, and when he finally reseated himself he appeared as self-contained and emotionless as usual.
“Are—are the people you want me to stay with Mrs. Low’s friends?” Lucy paused, once more embarrassed by her father’s calm scrutiny.
“Her cousin, Miss Storms,” he explained. “She is very well known in Chicago and could do a lot for you, we think.” This time he used the plural pronoun without hesitation. “You haven’t told your mother anything about this yet?”
“No, Papa, I’m afraid Mamma won’t like it.”
“So am I, Daughter. We’ll have to talk it over with her tonight.”
Lucy looked troubled.
“I’m afraid she won’t consent.”
“Yes, she will. You go on back now, and we’ll see after supper.”
Lucy was very thoughtful as she walked home. She had been much astonished to learn that Mrs. Low and her father were acquainted.
“Lucy is going to Chicago to school,” Mr. Merwent announced that night without preamble, toward the end of the evening meal.
Nannie looked up from her plate with a startled expression.
“What in the world are you talking about, Arthur?”
“About Lucy going away to school, as my words implied,” returned Mr. Merwent.
“But who said Lucy was going away?” insisted Nannie.
“I did,” responded her husband shortly.
“Lucy, what is all this about?” asked Nannie, appealing to her daughter.
“It’s about Lucy going away to school. Do you think you can manage to understand or shall I repeat it a few more times?” interrupted Arthur almost menacingly.
Nannie studied the face of her long silent husband and read in it something that experience taught her to be the signal of an occasion when tears, arguments, and tantrums would avail nothing. She rose suddenly and left the table and not long after they heard the front door close as she went out.
“A council of war,” remarked Arthur with a wry smile.
Lucy shut herself in her room and cried.
About nine o’clock Nannie returned from the “big house” as the Sheldon home was called, where she had received neither comfort nor suggestion.
“Don’t ask me to take over the management of your husband too, Nannie!” Mrs. Lockhart had exclaimed with asperity. “Any effort to help you is wasted because you make no attempt to cooperate.” And Nannie had left in tears.
When it became apparent that both Arthur and her daughter must be taken at their word, curiosity got the better of the secret resolve Nannie had made to show no interest in the matter of Lucy’s future.
“Of course it’s none of my business, Lucy, but I should think you and your father would at least tell me where you are going to stay when you get to Chicago. You don’t know a soul there and you’ve never been away from home in your life.”
“I told you I was going to stay with Miss Storms,” replied Lucy, repeating information she had previously offered, to which Nannie, being in a temper at the time, had refused to listen. “She is the friend of somebody Papa knows,” Lucy hesitated and flushed, “and he wrote and asked her if she’d take me.”
“I don’t know what your father is thinking about to let you go off like this to people he knows nothing of. She may be as common as dirt for all we know. I’d like to find out who the mutual friend is. I notice he don’t mention his name,” Nannie finished with a sneering intonation.
Lucy, her cheeks still scarlet, glanced away but said nothing.
During the days in which Lucy was preparing for departure Nannie relapsed into tearful silence and repelled her daughter’s advances and demonstrations until the girl, still not much more than a child in experience, was almost ill and about to relinquish her plan.
At this point a note came from Mrs. Lockhart which spurred Nannie to more decisive speech.
“I want to tell you something,” she announced, calling Lucy to her. “You had better think carefully before you leave home for if you go you can’t come back here! It will be final.”
“But, Mamma, Papa—” Lucy began.
“This is my final decision,” interrupted Nannie in a manner almost ludicrously like Mrs. Lockhart’s.
“Very well, Mamma,” replied Lucy, hardly able to keep back the tears, and choking with a sense of injustice.
Arthur came in at this juncture.
“What’s this, Anna?” he inquired peremptorily.
Nannie was silent and avoided his gaze. He turned to Lucy who told him what had taken place.
“My child shall come to my home as often and as long as she pleases,” he declared. “Lucy, come upstairs. I want to talk with you.”
The father and daughter left the room together.
Aunt Martha had been called in to help with the arrangements for Lucy’s departure. Nannie heard the old negress’s voice, then the voices of Arthur and Lucy, and the sound of a trunk being moved. Shut in her own room she was conscious of the feet that hurried past her door and the general bustle of packing for a journey. When there was no one about she stepped into the hall and listened. She convinced herself that Lucy would not really take this step but that the appearance of unusual preparation was arranged to deceive and punish her.
After a time, the father and daughter went out, Lucy locking her door. Aunt Martha went home at the same time. Nannie, from a window, watched them
