"Thank you. But I don't want the shawl and the ribbons, please: there
will be nobody there except the family. There never is, I think; and
now that she is so ill"--Molly was on the point of crying at the
thought of her friend lying ill and lonely, and looking for her
arrival. Moreover, she was sadly afraid lest the Squire had gone off
with the idea that she did not want to come--that she preferred that
stupid, stupid party at the Cockerells'. Mrs. Gibson, too, was sorry;
she had an uncomfortable consciousness of having given way to temper
before a stranger, and a stranger, too, whose good opinion she had
meant to cultivate; and she was also annoyed at Molly's tearful face.
"What can I do for you, to bring you back into good temper?" she
said. "First, you insist upon your knowing Lady Harriet better than
I do--I, who have known her for eighteen or nineteen years at least.
Then you jump at invitations without ever consulting me, or thinking
of how awkward it would be for me to go stumping into a drawing-room
all by myself; following my new name, too, which always makes me feel
uncomfortable, it is such a sad come-down after Kirkpatrick! And
then, when I offer you some of the prettiest things I have got, you
say it does not signify how you are dressed. What can I do to please
you, Molly? I, who delight in nothing more than peace in a family, to
see you sitting there with despair upon your face?"
Molly could stand it no longer; she went upstairs to her own
room--her own smart new room, which hardly yet seemed a familiar
place; and began to cry so heartily and for so long a time, that she
stopped at length for very weariness. She thought of Mrs. Hamley
wearying for her; of the old Hall whose very quietness might become
oppressive to an ailing person; of the trust the Squire had had in
her that she would come off directly with him. And all this oppressed
her much more than the querulousness of her stepmother's words.