It seemed to Mabel that her own difficult experiences lately, all the hard things she had had to bear, culminated in this sudden act of duty which lay before her. She must clear out--go to Jean and help her through.
"Oh, papa," she said, "please let me go."
Mr. Leighton jumped as though she had exploded a bomb.
"What, another," asked he; "isn’t one enough! No, indeed! I’ve had quite enough of the independence of girls by this time. There’s to be no more of it. Jean is coming home, and you will all stay at home--for ever."
He never spoke with more decision. Mrs. Leighton had reached the point where she could only stare.
Mabel sat down to her task of convincing them. She looked very dainty--almost fragile in the delicate gown of the particular colour of heliotrope which she had at last dared to assume. A slight pallor which Mrs. Leighton had noticed once or twice of late in Mabel had erased the bright colour which was usual with her. She spoke with a certain kind of maturity which her mother found a little pathetic.
"You see, papa, it’s like this. If you go to Jean now, in all probability whenever she sees you she will be as right as the mail, just as the rest of us are when we’ve been home-sick. Then she will be awfully disgusted that she made so much of it when she finds out what it is, and it won’t be coming home like a triumphant prima donna for her to come now, will it? She will fall awfully flat, don’t you think? And Cuthbert and Lance and you, papa, will go on saying that girls are no good for anything. You will take all the spirit out of us at last."
"She mustn’t go on being ill in London," said Mrs. Leighton. "We can’t stand the anxiety."
"Let me go up for a week or two, and see her started," pleaded Mabel. "I’ve been there, you know, and know a little about it, and she would have time to feel at home. If I find her really ill, I could send for you. Jean wouldn’t feel an idiot about it if I went up just to see her started."
"It would be good for me, mummy. I’ve been so stuck lately. Won’t you let me go?"
Something in Mabel’s voice touched her mother very much.
"Won’t Robin miss you?" she asked in a teasing, but anxious way. "You don’t tell us, Mabel, whether you want Robin to miss you or not. And that’s one of the main things, isn’t it?"