“Not if I can help it,” said Kate.  “I don’t believe in letting her go to perdition at all.  I went around to see the mother and I put the responsibility on her.  ‘Every time you make Peggy laugh,’ I said, ’you can count it for glory.  Every time you make her swear,—­for she does swear,—­you can know you’ve blundered.  Why don’t you give her some parties if you don’t want her to be going out to them?’”

“How did she take that?” asked Honora.

“It bothered her a good deal at first, but when I went down to meet Peggy the other day as she came out of the store, she told me her mother had had the little bisque Virgin moved into her own bedroom and that she had put a talking-machine in the place where it had stood.  I told Peggy the talking-machine was just a new kind of prayer, meant to make her happy, and that it wouldn’t do for her to let her mother’s prayers go unanswered.  ‘Any one with eyes like yours,’ I said to her, ’is bound to have beaux in plenty, but you’ve only one mother and you’d better hang on to her.’”

“Then what did she say?” demanded the interested Honora.

“She’s an impudent little piece.  She said, ’You’ve some eyes yourself, Miss Barrington, but I suppose you know how to make them behave.”

“Better marry that girl as soon as you can, Miss Barrington,” counseled David; “that is, if any hymeneal authority is vested in you.”

“That’s what Peggy wanted to know,” admitted Kate.  “She said to me the other day:  ’Ain’t you Cupid, Miss Barrington?  I heard about a match you made up, and it was all right—­the real thing, sure enough.’  ’Have you a job for me—­supposing I was Cupid?’ I asked.  That set her off in a gale.  So I suppose there’s something up Peggy’s very short sleeves.”

The Fulhams liked to hear her stories, particularly as she kept the amusing or the merely pathetic ones for them, refraining from telling them of the unspeakable, obscene tragedies which daily came to her notice.  It might have been supposed that scenes such as these would so have revolted her that she could not endure to deal with them; but this was far from being the case.  The greater the need for her help, the more determined was she to meet the demand.  She had plenty of superiors whom she could consult, and she suffered less from disgust or timidity than any one could have supposed possible.

The truth was, she was grateful for whatever absorbed her and kept her from dwelling upon that dehumanized house at Silvertree.  Her busy days enabled her to fight her sorrow very well, but in the night, like a wailing child, her longing for her mother awoke, and she nursed it, treasuring it as those freshly bereaved often do.  The memory of that little frustrated soul made her tender of all women, and too prone, perhaps, to lay to some man the blame of their shortcomings.  She had no realization that she had set herself in this subtle and subconscious way against men.  But whether she admitted it or not, the fact remained that she stood with her sisters, whatever their estate, leagued secretly against the other sex.