"I'm too set in my ways to enjoy new experiences, and I don't like strangers. We might catch contagious diseases, and there is no place where we could be so comfortable as in Florida. No," she shook her head kindly but firmly, "we will go South as usual."
"Oh--sugar!" The vehemence with which Wallie uttered the expletive showed the extent of his disappointment.
"Wallie! I'm surprised at you!" She regarded him with annoyance.
"I'm tired of going to the same places year after year, doing the same thing, seeing the same old fossils!"
"Wallie, you are speaking of my friends and yours," she reminded him.
"They're all right, but I like to make new ones. I don't want to go, Aunt Mary."
She said significantly: "Don't you think you are a little ungrateful--in the circumstances?"
It was the first time she had ever reminded him of his dependency.
"If you mean I am an ingrate, that is an unpleasant word, Aunt Mary."
She shrugged her shoulder.
"Place your own interpretation upon it, Wallace."
"Perhaps you think I am not capable of earning my own living?"
"I have not said so."
"But you mean it!" he cried, hotly.
Miss Macpherson was nearly as amazed as Wallie to hear herself saying: "Possibly you had better try it."
She had taken two cups of strong coffee that morning and her nerves were over-stimulated, and perhaps with the intuition of a jealous woman she half suspected that "the girl from Wyoming" had something to do with his restlessness and desire to go West. The time she most dreaded was the day when she would have to share her nephew with another woman.
Wallie's eyes were blazing when he answered: "I shall! I shall never be beholden to you for another penny. When I wanted to do something for myself you wouldn't let me. You're not fair, Aunt Mary!"
Pale and breathing heavily in their emotion, they looked at each other with hard, angry eyes--eyes in which there was not a trace of the affection which for years had existed between them.
"Suit yourself," she said, finally, and turned her back on him.
Wallie went to his room in a daze, too bewildered to realize immediately what had happened. That he had quarrelled with his aunt, permanently, irrevocably, seemed incredible. But he would never eat her bread of charity again--he had said it. As for her, he knew her Scotch stubbornness too well to think that she would offer it. No, he was sure the break was final.
A sense of freedom came to him gradually as it grew upon him that he was loose from the apron-strings that had led him since childhood. He need never again eat food he did not like because it was "good for him." He could sit in draughts if he wanted to and sneeze his head off. He could put on his woollen underwear when he got darned good and ready. He could swim when there were white caps in the harbour and choose his own clothing.