Ellen came in, divided between uneasiness and delight, and inquired
painstakingly about his mother, and his uncle in California, and the
Presbyterian minister. But she was uncomfortable and uneasy and refused
to sit down, and Willy watched her furtively slipping out again with a
slight frown. It was not right, somehow, this dividing of the world into
classes, those who served and those who were served. But he had an idea
that it was those below who made the distinction, nowadays. It was the
masses who insisted on isolating the classes. They made kings, perhaps
that they might some day reach up and pull them off their thrones. At
the top of the stairs Ellen found Mademoiselle, who fixed her with cold
eyes.
“What were you doing down there,” she demanded.
“Miss Lily sent for me, to see that young man I told you about.”
“How dare you go down? And into the library?”
“I've just told you,” said Ellen, her face setting. “She sent for me.”
“Why didn't you say you were in bed?”
“I'm no liar, Mademoiselle. Besides, I guess it's no crime to see a boy
I've known all his life, and his mother and me like sisters.”
“You are a fool,” said Mademoiselle, and turning clumped back in her
bedroom slippers to her room.
Ellen went up to her room. Heretofore she had given her allegiance to
Mademoiselle and Mrs. Cardew, and in a more remote fashion, to Howard.
But Ellen, crying angry tears in her small white bed that night, sensed
a new division in the family, with Mademoiselle and Anthony and Howard
and Grace on one side, and Lily standing alone, fighting valiantly for
the right to live her own life, to receive her own friends, and the
friends of her friends, even though one of these latter might be a
servant in her own house.
Yet Ellen, with the true snobbishness of the servants' hall, disapproved
of Lily's course while she admired it.
“But they're all against her,” Ellen reflected. “The poor thing! And
just because of Willy Cameron. Well, I'll stand by her, if they throw me
out for it.”
In her romantic head there formed strange, delightful visions. Lily
eloping with Willy Cameron, assisted by herself. Lily in the little
Cameron house, astounding the neighborhood with her clothes and her
charm, and being sponsored by Ellen. The excitement of the village, and
the visits to Ellen to learn what to wear for a first call, and were
cards necessary?
Into Ellen's not very hard-working but monotonous life had comes its
first dream of romance.
CHAPTER XIII
For three weeks Lily did not see Louis Akers, nor did she go back to the
house on Cardew Way. She hated doing clandestine or forbidden things,
and she was, too, determined to add nothing to the tenseness she began
to realize existed at home. She went through her days, struggling to fit
herself again into the old environment, reading to her mother,
lending herself with assumed enthusiasm to such small gayeties as Lent
permitted, and doing penance in a dozen ways for that stolen afternoon
with Louis Akers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account