Page:Robins - My Little Sister.djvu/24

12 I was furious and miserable.

I said to myself that, of course, my mother would never dream. . . . But the servants gossip poisoned all the time of primroses that year. I thought about little else in our walks.

Once we met him. Something began that day to whisper in the back of my head: "If he asks her enough she might give in. She does to me when I persist."

Out of my first great anxiety was born the beginning of my knowledge of my mother's character.

I could see that she, too, was afraid of giving in.

But afraid of contest quite as much. Afraid of - I knew not what. But I knew she stayed away from church, because she was afraid. I knew our walks were different, because we were always thinking we might meet him. I prayed God to give my mother strength - for Christ's sake not to let it happen. Morning and night I prayed that prayer for half a summer.

Dreadful as the issue was, I was thankful afterwards that I had taken the matter in hand.