Mariah and Jonas became inseparable and began meeting every afternoon for tea at Mariah’s school, and then again for supper at the café or a friend’s house. On one Saturday in early summer, Mariah decided to walk up to the house with Hannah and Jemima, ostensibly to admire the renovations, but really to see Jonas. Hannah and Jemima were aware of Mariah’s real intentions, and they were jealous. They both felt that Mariah was theirs, not to be shared with anyone. They had known her all their lives and dreaded the day when she would marry and abandon them.
Yes, they themselves had both been smitten with Jonas at first, but that changed once they were cognizant of his attraction to Mariah. They made every effort to come between Jonas and Mariah, if only to keep them from having any sense of privacy. They surely would not discuss their future together if the girls were about. But it was often difficult for them to intrude because they had their own chores to do after school and then their mother often needed help with their brothers.
So they were quite pleased when Mariah asked them to come along with her to see the house. Only because Mrs. Heartswell knew that her daughters missed Mariah’s visits, did she agree to let them go. She felt the girls needed to learn that Miss Ringworthy had a right to her own future and that the girls would eventually have to let her go. She had tried counseling her daughters when they complained that Miss Ringworthy was neglecting them. They rationalized that Miss Ringworthy’s extracurricular meetings with them had been to provide them with additional education, and now that she was spending so much of her free time with Mr. Buckthorn, their education was now threatened. Their mother smiled and humored them at first, saying simply that they were capable of studying well enough on their own. But their complaints evolved, sounding more like that they had had a contract with Miss Ringworthy and now she was breaking it. Mrs. Heartswell was perplexed by their arguments, wondering what they could know about contracts and such.
Their father tried to reason with them, too, asserting that Miss Ringworthy did not owe anyone her free time but herself. Perhaps she was a bit more fond of them than the other children because she had known them the longest, and felt a kind of kinship with them. But in that case, he argued, they should treat her as they would any other sibling and not expect more from her than they would expect from themselves. It was the wrong argument to make. The problem the girls had was that they did expect from Mariah what they expected from themselves: utter and eternal loyalty. That she would make herself unworthy of that loyalty, the same loyalty that each girl felt for the other, was unacceptable.
Hannah and Jemima felt they had two choices: either blame Mariah and punish her accordingly or blame Jonas and punish him accordingly. The first option meant that they would lose Mariah entirely, which was unthinkable. The second option was more viable, they thought, because if Jonas were not around, then they would have Mariah all to themselves again. So, on that sunny Saturday morning, while they were sitting in the swing on the front porch, waiting for Mariah’s arrival, they agreed to plan for a way to get rid of Jonas. It wasn’t important how they did it; only that they would succeed.
