Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/87

 would say every once in a while. One day last week I heard her muttering: ‘It’s awful to be a mother—awful to be a mother and suffer like this. Yet she called me selfish!’ And another time she said, ‘Is it selfish to want to keep the only thing you have left in the world?’ But she was lovely tonight when she told me I could go. I know folks say Mother isn’t quite right in her mind—and sometimes she a little queer. But it’s only when other people are around. You've no idea, Emily, how nice and dear she is when we're alone. I hate to leave her. But I get some education!”

“I’m very glad if what I said has made her change her mind, but she will never forgive me for it. She has hated me ever since—you know she has. You know how she at me whenever I’m at the Tansy Patch—oh, she’s very polite to me. But her eyes, Teddy.”

“I know,” said Teddy, uncomfortably. “But don’t be hard on Mother, Emily. I’m sure she wasn’t always like that—though she has been ever since I can remember. I don’t know of her before that. She never tells me anything—I don’t know a thing about my Father. She won't talk about him. I don’t even know how she got that scar on her face.”

“I don’t think there’s anything the matter with your Mother’s mind, really,” said Emily slowly. “But I think there’s something troubling it—always troubling it—something she can’t forget or throw off. Teddy, I’m sure your mother is. Of course, I don’t mean by a ghost or anything silly like that. But by some terrible .”

“She isn’t happy, I know,” said Teddy, “and, of course, we're poor. Mother said tonight she could only send me to Shrewsbury for three years—that was all she could afford. But that will give me a start—I’ll get on somehow after that. I I can. I’ll make it up to her yet.”

“You will be a great artist some day,” said Emily dreamily.

They had come to the end of the Tomorrow Road.