“I say it again, Joanna, my child,” continued Juley; and though she tried to put sternness into her tones they remained simply vexes: “To please Mrs. Lovatt, or Mr. Nilsson, or Phemie Pringle, or any of the new friends you have made since you came home, there is no trouble you will not take, and take gladly. But if poor mother asks you to do something for her sake, it always goes against the grain. How is it? You get lots of flattery, Joanna, outside your home, but I must speak the truth to you; and this that I have said, however it may grieve us both, is the truth. Think how little it is I am asking of you – simply to give one short hour of next Friday to read and pray quietly with a few of God’s dear good workers! And remember, my daughter, you will not have mother with you always. She is growing older, and her constant prayer is that she may not be spared to old age, to be a burden to herself and others.”

Joanna sprang to her feet. She was seething with a helpless sense of injustice. It was more than three years now since she had returned from Italy, a widow, to her mother’s house, and scenes of this kind were familiar enough. But all of a sudden at this moment she found the situation intolerable. It was intolerable that her mother should stand there pleading with her, holding the tray so ungracefully, looking in her shabby dress more like a servant than the mistress of the house. In a confused fury, but controlling her movements, she crossed the room and took the tray roughly from Juley’s hands.

“I’m sorry, mother,” she said. “If you want it so much I’ll go to the meeting.” But she was incapable of any accent of relenting tenderness.

“Thank you, Jo!” The mother smiled now in timid triumph. “You really will come? You promise mother not to let anything prevent you?”

“Haven’t I said I’ll come?” The girl’s exasperation brought violent shoots of pain to the back of her eyeballs. “Surely,” she thought, “mother might let it alone, now she has got her way!” And before taking the tray to the pantry, she added, “But remember it is only to please you, not to please Miss Gedge.”