"What do you want Mary Lee for?" asked Jack a little jealously and because she must always know the whys and wherefores.
"I want to see her before Aunt Sarah does," said Nan with a ghost of a smile, and Jack departed upon her errand.
It was not long before Mary Lee, all curiosity, made her appearance. That Aunt Sarah should have exercised her authority in such a decided manner, and that Nan should have fallen under her displeasure was a matter of no small moment to each of the four Corners, for who knew now where the blow might next fall? "Of course," commented Mary Lee, when Nan's story was told, "it was because you didn't ask Aunt Sarah's permission, and because you answered her so. And then, I really don't see, Nan, how you could have been willing to go over there, after all that has happened. You know how Aunt Sarah feels about it and mother, too."
"Mother isn't so dead set against our going there," Nan informed her. "She would like to make up with Aunt Helen, I know she would, and I know she will say I am to go if I choose."
"Well I shouldn't choose," returned Mary Lee, her head in air. "I don't see how you can feel so. I shouldn't want to make up with them when they have treated mother so mean."
"Aunt Helen hasn't. She's always loved us, but she had to stand by her mother and that was right," persisted Nan. Then in a little superior way--"You don't understand all the ins and outs of it as I do, Mary Lee."
"I don't care," returned Mary Lee, immediately on the defensive. "I think you are very mealy-mouthed and are not showing proper respect to the family."
"Pooh!" returned Nan. "Just you wait till you hear what mother has to say."
This confidence in her mother's opinion somewhat altered Mary Lee's point of view. "Well," she said, "I wouldn't have gone myself, still, I think Aunt Sarah has no right to punish big girls like us for something our mother would not scold us for. She ought to wait till she knows for sure before she ups and makes a prisoner of one of us."
"She'd think she had a right to shut mother up if she did anything Aunt Sarah disapproved of," said Nan, mournfully. "Tell me, Mary Lee, how are you going to explain it to the boys?"
"But you can't say there is a family quarrel and that we aren't allowed to visit our own nearest relations."