She
doesn't quite know whether to take up the artistic life or be a society
queen, and she feels that nobody understands her at home. It makes her
nearly wild when Aunt Elizabeth comes back from one of her grand visits
and acts as if SHE wasn't anything. She came over right after the row,
of course, and told me all about it--she had on her new white China
silk and her hat with the feathers. She said she was so excited about
everything that she couldn't stop to think about what she put on; she
looked terribly dressed up, but she had come all through the village
with her waist unfastened in the middle of the back--she said she
couldn't reach the hooks. Aunt Elizabeth had gone away that morning for
overnight, so nobody could get at her to find out about her actions
with Mr. Goward, and the telegram she had sent to him, until the next
day, and every one was nearly crazy. They talked about it for two hours
before Maria went home. Then Peggy had locked herself in her room, and
her mother had gone out, and her grandmother was sitting now on the
piazza, rocking and sighing, with her eyes shut. Alice said each person
had got dreadfully worked up, not only about Aunt Elizabeth, but about
all the ways every other member of the family had hurt that person at
some time. Maria said that Peggy never would take HER advice, and Peggy
returned that Maria had hurt her more than any one by her attitude
toward Harry Goward, that she was so suspicious of him that it had made
him act unnaturally from the first--that nothing had hurt her so much
since the time Maria took away Peggy's doll on purpose when she was a
little girl--the doll she used to sleep with--and burned it; it was
something she had NEVER got over.
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