Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/120



LL that Julia Shane had written her daughter was true enough. The escapade of Ellen shocked the Town, not altogether unwillingly however, for it opened a new field for talk and furnished one more evidence of the wildness of a family which had never been con tent with conformity, a clan which kept bursting its bonds and satisfying in a barbarous fashion its hunger after life.

When Hattie Tolliver, tearful and shaken, came to her aunt for consolation, Julia Shane received her in the vast bedtoom she occupied above the Mill yard. The old woman said, "Come, Hattie. You've no reason to feel badly. Ellen is a good girl and a wise one. It's the best thing that could have happened, if you'll only see it in that light."

But Mrs. Tolliver, so large, so energetic, so emotional, was hurt. She kept on sobbing. "If only she had told me! . . . It's as if she deceived me."

At which Julia Shane smiled quietly to herself. "Ah, that's it, Hattie. She couldn't have told you, because she knew you so well. She knew that you couldn't bear to have her leave you. The girl was wise. She chose the better way. It's your pride that's hurt and the feeling that, after all, there was something stronger in Ellen than her love for you." She took the red work-stained hand of her niece in her thin, blue-veined one and went on, "We have to come to that, Hattie . . . all of us. It's only natural that a time comes when children want to be free. It's like the wild animals . . . the foxes and the wolves. We aren't any different. We're just animals too, helpless in the rough hands of Nature. She does with us as She pleases."

But Mrs. Tolliver continued to sob helplessly. It was the first time in her life that she had refused to accept in the end what came to her.

"You don't suppose I wanted. Lily to go and live in Paris?