Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/80

70 "I don't see what harm it can do me to go to Boston for a little while," she parried. "I want your approval, of course, but I'm twenty-five—and"

"Haven't you answered that letter yet?" cut in Aunt Augusta crisply.

"Yes, I've answered it."

"Oh, you have!" Relief was obvious in Aunt Augusta's voice. "Why didn't you say so?"

"I've told them I'd take the room," Reba murmured.

Only the clock replied for ten seconds or so.

"You told them what?" Aunt Augusta gasped.

"I told them I'd take the room," Reba replied more clearly, and suddenly she raised her eyes, and, for the first time in her life, squarely met the stare of the monsters peering at her over the rims of Aunt Augusta's glasses. She drew in her breath deep. "I'm going to Boston," she announced. "I'm going to Boston if it kills me," she repeated in a low voice; and David, from his hiding-place in the adjoining dining-room, was surprised to catch a look about the girl with her head thrown up like that, and her eyes steely and hard, that reminded him of the crayon of his father at the age of nineteen, hanging upstairs in the spare-chamber.

It had been warfare before, but after Reba's announcement it was proclaimed warfare, and Aunt Augusta bent every nerve, resorted to any measure, any device, legitimate or otherwise, that might help to stamp out this astonishing menace to her power. She appealed to the girl's ineffectual father; suggested financial obstructions; went so far as to attempt to cancel the room at the Alliance; urged the minister at the church to point out to the erring girl the