time she had thought that Mrs. Milray was going to ask her to visit her
in New York; Mrs. Milray had thrown out a hint of something of the kind
at parting, but that was the last of it; and now she at once made up her
mind that she would like to go with Mrs. Lander, while discreetly saying
that she would ask her father and mother to come and talk with her.




XIII.

Her parents objected to leaving their work; each suggested that the other
had better go; but they both came at Clementina's urgence. Her father
laughed and her mother frowned when she told them what Mrs. Lander
wanted, from the same misgiving of her sanity. They partly abandoned this
theory for a conviction of Mrs. Lander's mere folly when she began to
talk, and this slowly yielded to the perception that she had some streaks
of sense. It was sense in the first place to want to have Clementina with
her, and though it might not be sense to suppose that they would be
anxious to let her go, they did not find so much want of it as Mrs.
Lander talked on. It was one of her necessities to talk away her emotions
before arriving at her ideas, which were often found in a tangle, but
were not without a certain propriety. She was now, after her interview
with Clementina, in the immediate presence of these, and it was her ideas
that she began to produce for the girl's father and mother. She said,
frankly, that she had more money than she knew what to do with, and they
must not think she supposed she was doing a favor, for she was really
asking one.

She was alone in the world, without near connections of her own, or