"
"My daughter, what can she have said to annoy you so much?"
"Oh," exclaimed Eleanor, savagely snatching to pieces a bit of delicate
silk she held in her hand, "what every one else is talking about. What
does any one in this town have to talk about just now, I wonder, except
Reynolds Bartram and the church? Why is it that they all think it
necessary to come and talk to me about it? I am sure I am not specially
interested in church work, and I don't believe any one who has talked
to me about it is, but I hear nothing else from morning till night
when any visitor comes in. I was congratulating myself that I had an
excuse to-day, so that I need not see any one who might call, but that
dreadful girl is worse than all the rest put together. She seems to
think, as her folks at home haven't anything else to talk about, and as
her father is so delighted at the 'blessed change,' as she expresses
it, that has come over Bartram, that I should feel just as happy about
it."
"Well, daughter, don't you?"
"No, mother, I don't. I suppose it's perfectly dreadful in me to say
so, but I don't feel anything of the kind. It's just horrid; and I wish
you and father would take me away for a little while, or else let me go
off on a visit. People talk as if Ray belonged entirely to me,--as if I
had something to do about it; and you know perfectly well I haven't.
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