Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/142

132 she had refused to do that. She had told them she would assume her responsibilities as daughter, but she would not assume them to-morrow, nor the next day either! There were affairs here that she owed some obligations to. They had given her no notice; she was sorry; she couldn't possibly manage to return to Ridgefield for ten days or so, she thought.

It was the next morning when Reba was dressing that she spied Cousin Pattie's scarab in a corner of her jewel-box. Her heart felt very sad and heavy after her restless night. She picked up the scarab, and let it lie a moment in her palm, then shook her head over it, and sighed. "My resurrection!" she murmured bitterly. "No use, Cousin Pattie," she whispered, and shrugged her shoulders. "A girl's first duty is to her parents," she thought. "There's no getting around that—unless she's married. And I'm not. I'm not married." She smiled crookedly, then abruptly glanced up, as if she had stumbled upon something that startled her. "I'm not married," she said outloudout-loud [sic], and abruptly sat down on the edge of her bed, closing her hand tight over the scarab. "No. I'm not married," she told herself for the third time, her eyes round and large now.

She sat there on the edge of her unmade bed for a long time, half an hour perhaps, staring fixedly out at the gray slate-covered roofs. What if there were a prior claim upon her? Startling supposition! What if actually she were bound by law to somebody whom the very Bible taught she must cleave to and desert all others to follow? Reba did not see the roofs outside her window, as she sat and stared at them, nor the