Part 19 (1/2)

”If I was in your place I wouldn't worry about it. I guess Aunt Katharine's got some sense if she _is_ so cranky. And Esther's old enough to know what she's about. Just leave her alone to get sick of some of those notions herself before she's done with 'em, and you ease up on the fretting. It doesn't do a bit of good, anyhow.”

She really meant to ”ease up.” Tom's opinion on the last point was distinctly sound, but the old disquiet had possession of her again within five minutes from the time that conversation ended. The letter had come from home-she learned it as she entered the house-giving hearty consent that Esther should remain in New England, and the girl was already off to carry the word to Aunt Katharine. She had said she would be back soon, but no one really expected it, and supper was over before they saw her coming across the fields. Kate, who was watching, saw her first, and slipping out of the house hurried to meet her.

She had brought happy thoughts from Aunt Katharine's, happy and serious too, it would seem from the look in her face, and they occupied her so intently that she had almost met her sister before she saw her coming.

Then she put out both her hands with an eager greeting.

”I'm so glad you've come,” she said. ”I wanted to talk it over a little by ourselves.” She slipped her arm through Kate's, and turned back into the darkening fields. ”You weren't surprised at what the letter said, were you? I was sorry you weren't there when it came; but I had to take it down to Aunt Katharine, for it was partly to her, and I couldn't wait.”

”No, I wasn't surprised. I felt sure they'd let you stay,” said Kate, and then she added, ”I do hope you'll have a good time, Esther, and enjoy everything as much as you expect to.”

She had made an effort to speak heartily, but there was such a sober note in her voice that Esther's face clouded, and she looked quickly at her sister. ”If you were only going to be here too, Kate, it would be perfect,” she said. ”I shall be wis.h.i.+ng all the way along that you were in the good times with me. And if you hadn't said so positively that you wanted to go home, I should have felt like proposing to Aunt Katharine to cut my time in Boston in two and let us be there together for a little while.”

”I shouldn't have thanked you for it if you had,” said Kate, a sudden impatience leaping into her voice. Then, with a bitterness she ought to have kept down, she added, ”I don't like Aunt Katharine, and I don't want her favors.”

The look in Esther's face changed. ”You don't do Aunt Katharine justice, Kate,” she said. ”n.o.body does here. She isn't hateful and hard-hearted, as you all seem to think. She's good and kind and true-oh, so true! I believe she'd do more and give more than any other person I ever saw to bring about what she thinks is right. I don't know, I'm sure, how she came to like me, but I know why I like her. I admire her and I love her, and there's n.o.body in the world I'd rather take a favor from than Aunt Katharine.”

Kate set her teeth hard. She had prejudiced everything she had meant to say by the heat with which she had spoken. She was silent a moment, then she said almost piteously: ”I don't wonder she likes you. But I may as well be honest, Esther; I do hate to see her getting such an influence over you. It's all well enough to admire her for standing up for her own opinions, but I don't see how _you_ can fall in with some of them. I don't see how you can bear it to hear her talk so bitterly against the ways we've always been used to. And especially I don't see how you can stand it to hear her run down the men as she does.”

”I don't agree with all her opinions,” said Esther, quickly, ”but I can see how she comes to hold them, and she doesn't always talk as harshly as you think. But it isn't her opinions any way; it's her own self that I care about.”

”And you'll end by wanting to look at everything just as she does, because you like her so much and feel so indebted to her,” said Kate.

Then, with an accent that was fairly tragic, she added: ”Oh, she knows it, she knows it, and that's what she wants to keep you here for! She'll end by wanting you never to marry, and offering to leave you all her money if you'll promise not to do it.”

Esther drew her arm away from her sister, and the flush that swept over her face was plain even in the twilight. ”I think you'd better leave all that to Aunt Katharine and me. It doesn't strike me as coming under your charge,” she said proudly. And then the coldness in her voice melted with a sudden heat as she added: ”But suppose I _should_ come to see things as she does-suppose I _should_ come to take a different view of life from what I did once, what then? I'll go where my honest convictions lead me. It's my right and my duty, and I shall do it.”

It sounded very brave and solemn in the twilight. A whippoorwill from the woods behind Aunt Katharine's house had the only word that followed, and he called it across the stillness with a long soft cadence that sounded like a wail.

They turned their faces to the house and walked toward it without speaking. It was a relief to both when Stella came out to meet them.

”I thought you were never coming,” she said to Esther. ”Dear me, I shall be glad when I get you in Boston, with Aunt Katharine too far away to use her magnet on you.”

A half hour later Kate was in conference with Tom again. She had called him into the shadows of the barn, and her voice was almost a whisper as she said:-

”Tom, I want you to wake me up to-morrow morning when you come down to do the milking. I'm going to make a call before breakfast.”

Tom gave a low whistle. ”At that time in the morning! Where are you going?” he demanded.

”To Aunt Katharine's,” she said.

Tom gave another whistle, this time a louder one. ”Great Scott!” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. ”So you're going to keep it right up, are you?”

”I'm going to keep it up till I've had one good square talk with her,”

said Kate, with decision. ”Very likely it's none of my business,-you've told me that, and so has Esther,-but she's tremendously clear that she's got to follow her conscience where it leads her, and mine leads _me_ right down there to Aunt Katharine's. I can't go home without doing it, and there's only a week longer for me to stay, so I may as well take time by the forelock.”

”I should think it was taking time by the forelock with a vengeance to go down there at five o'clock. Why don't you go at a reasonable hour?”

growled Tom.

Kate was losing patience. ”Because I don't want Esther to know I'm going,” she said. ”If I go later she might happen to come in while I'm there, or she might ask me where I'd been. No, I've made up my mind to go before breakfast, and all you have to do is to wake me up.”

”I'd like to know how I'm going to do it without waking her, too,” he said.