"
Mary could have replied that in the convent she had had the warmth and
brightness of love, but she merely mumbled that she had often taken
cold in the autumn.
"It will be impossible for us to leave home at present," her aunt went
on. "If you're determined to go, I must get you some one to travel with,
or you must have an elderly maid-companion. Perhaps that would be best.
One can't always find friends travelling at the time they're wanted."
"Mary isn't such a baby that she ought to need looking after," said
Elinor. "She's nearly twenty-five--as old as I am--and you don't mind my
going to Exeter alone."
Elinor was twenty-eight. When she was a child she had assumed airs of
superiority on the strength of her age, Mary remembered, but now she and
her cousin seemed suddenly to match their years. Mary was glad of this,
however, and bolstered Elinor's argument by admitting her own maturity.
"I don't want a companion-maid, please," she said, with the mingling of
meekness and violent resolution which had ended her novitiate. "It will
be better for my Italian, to get one in Italy. I shall be safe alone
till I arrive. You see, Reverend Mother has given me a letter to the
Superior in the mother-house, and other letters, too. I shall have
friends in Florence and Rome, and lots of places."
"But it wouldn't look well for you to travel alone," Mrs. Home-Davis
objected.
"Nobody will be looking at me. Nobody will know who I am," Mary argued.
Then, desperately, "Rather than you should find me a companion, Aunt
Sara, I won't go to Italy at all.
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