Mrs. Mortimer glanced without smiling at a miniature of her sister, blooming in a shrine-like arrangement on her mother's writing-desk. She shook her dark head with a gesture like her father's, and said with his blunt decisiveness, "Really, Mother, you must draw the line about Lydia. She's only human. I guess if the house is good enough for you and father it is good enough for her."
She crossed the room toward the door with a brisk rattle of starched skirts, but as she passed her mother her hand was caught and held. "That's just it, Marietta--that's just what came over me! _Is_ what's good enough for us good enough for Lydia? Won't anything, even the best, in Endbury be a come-down for her?"
The slightly irritated impatience with which Mrs. Mortimer had listened to the first words of this speech gave way to a shrewd amusement. "You mean that you've put Lydia up on such a high plane to begin with that whichever way she goes will be a step down," she asked.
"Yes, yes; that's just it," breathed her mother, unconscious of any irony in her daughter's accent. She fixed her eyes, which, in spite of her having long since passed the half-century mark, were still very clear and blue, anxiously upon Marietta's opaque dark ones. She felt not only a need to be reassured in general by anyone, but a reluctant faith in the younger woman's judgment.
Marietta released herself with a laugh that was like a light, mocking tap on her mother's shoulder. "Well, folks that haven't got real worries will certainly manufacture them! To worry about Lydia's future in Endbury! Aren't you afraid the sun won't rise some day? If ever there was any girl that had a smooth road in front of her--"
The door-bell rang. "They've come! They've come!" cried Mrs. Emery wildly.
"Lydia wouldn't ring the bell, and her train isn't due till ten," Mrs. Mortimer reminded her.
"Oh, yes. Well, then, it's the new sideboard. I am so--"
"It's a boy with a big pasteboard box," contradicted Mrs. Mortimer, looking down the hall to the open front door.
Seeing someone there to receive it, the boy set the box inside the screen door and started down the steps.
"Bring it here! Bring it here!" called Mrs. Mortimer, commandingly.
"It's for Lydia," said Mrs. Emery, looking at the address. She spoke with an accent of dramatic intensity, and a flush rose to her fair cheeks.