"Oh, good Lord!" she said shortly. "Bluff the rest of the world
like a professional, Eileen, but why try it with me? You're
right about my having common sense. I'll admit that I am using
it now. I will be of age in a few days, and then we'll take John
Gilman and go to the Consolidated Bank, and if it suits your
convenience to be absent for four or five days at that period,
I'll take John Gilman and we'll go together."
Eileen was amazed. The receding color in her cheeks left the
rouge on them a ghastly, garish thing.
"Well, I won't do anything of the sort," she said hotly, "and
neither will John Gilman."
"Unfortunately for you," answered Linda, "John Gilman is my
guardian, not yours. He'll be forced to do what the law says he
must, and what common decency tells him he must, no matter what
his personal feelings are; and I might as well tell you that your
absence has done you no good. You'd far better have come home,
as you agreed to, and gone over the books and made me a decent
allowance, because in your absence John came here to ask me where
you were, and I know that he was anxious."
"He came here!" cried Eileen.
"Why, yes," said Linda. "Was it anything unusual? Hasn't he
been coming here ever since I can remember? Evidently you didn't
keep him as well posted this time as you usually do. He came
here and asked for me."
"And I suppose," said Eileen, an ugly red beginning to rush into
her white cheeks, "that you took pains to make things
uncomfortable for me.
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