"Run off to bed, now--no more talking." Cecilia ran upstairs
obediently. Behind her, as she neared her attic, she heard her
stepmother's voice break out anew.
"Just fancy Papa!" she muttered. Any mother sensations were lost in
wonder at her father's actually having intervened. The incredible thing
had happened. For a moment she felt a wave of pity for him, left alone
to face the shrill voice. Then she shrugged her shoulders.
"Ah, well--he married her," she said. "I suppose he has had it many a
time. Perhaps he knows how to stop it--I don't!" She laughed, turning
the key in the lock, and sitting down beside the open window. The
glamour of her happy evening was still upon her; even the scene with her
stepmother had not had power to chase it away. The scene was only to be
expected; the laughter of the evening was worth so every-day a penalty.
And the end of Mrs. Rainham's rule was nearly in sight. Not even to
herself for a moment would she admit that there was any possibility of
Bob failing to "make good" and take her away.
She went downstairs next morning to an atmosphere of sullen resentment.
Her father gave her a brief, abstracted nod, in response to her
greeting, and went on with his bacon and his Daily Mail; her
stepmother's forbidding expression checked any attempt at conversation.
The children stared at her with a kind of malevolent curiosity; they
knew that a storm had been brewing for her the night before, and longed
to know just how thoroughly she had "caught it.
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