th
a laugh. It was not a pleasant laugh.

"What would you like for dinner?" she asked Alexina, her hand on the
bell.

"I don't care," said Alexina; "anything."

"So it doesn't cost too much," said Emily, laughing the laugh that was
not pleasant.

Later, the conferences with the servants over, she sat down to make
certain entries in the ledger, open on the desk. Alexina picked up a
magazine.

"He asked me one day," said Emily, turning, "what had become of an end
of roast that ought to have come back made over, and said there must
be waste in the kitchen."

"Don't," said Alexina. "I wouldn't, Emily."

"Why not? You knew it all before."

Alexina flushed. "Yes," she said slowly, "I did. I knew it--before.
How are your mother and the little girls, Emily?"

"Mother--oh, all right. He told me to ask Nan and Nell over every
Friday from school to supper, and mother and father and Oliver over to
Sunday night tea. 'It ought, in the end,' he told me, 'to make an
appreciable saving in your mother's providing, these continued
absences from stated meals.'"

"You mustn't, Emily. Tell me about the winter. Have you been gay?"

"Gay?" Emily wheeled from the desk. She gazed at Alexina almost
wildly. Then she laughed again. "Gay! oh, my great Heaven--gay! Then
you don't know? I am going to bear him a child--and, oh, help me
somehow; Alexina, I loathe him."

A child, Uncle Austen and Emily a child! A warmth swept out of
Alexina's very soul and enveloped her. She knew, and she did not know.
Other women and girls had taken it for granted always that she knew,
and talked on before her. It meant to her something vague,
unapproachable, veiled, and a great, overwhelming consciousness
stifled and choked her.

"I went out on the platform of the train while we were away," Emily
was saying, Emily who never, even in childhood, had curbed a mood, a
dislike, a humour, "and tried to throw myself off, but I was afraid."

Alexina shrank. "I mustn't listen--you mustn't tell me--it's between
you and him, Emily."

Emily had gotten up and was walking about.

"He offered Oliver a place in the bank, to please me, I thought.
Oliver's nineteen now. The place had been paying eighteen dollars a
week, and Oliver had only been making twelve. So he offered it to him
at fifteen. 'To the benefiting of both sides,' he came home and told
me."

Emily stood still, her eyes tearless and hard. "Put on your wraps,
Alexina, and we'll go drive. It's like a