SHE nodded to where before them a long wooden picket fence outlined the
street boundary of Mrs. Savage’s lawn. Here was an older quarter than
that upper reach of National Avenue whence the two young people had
come; the houses here and southward were most of them substantial and
ample, but not of the imposing spaciousness prevailing farther up the
avenue. Three or four of them had felt the seventies so deeply as to
adopt the mansard roof in company with one or two parasite slate
turrets; but in the main the houses were without pretentiousness; and
among them it was curious and pleasant to see lingering two or three
white, low-gabled cottages of a single story.
In the summertime old-fashioned flowers grew in the yards of these, and
there might be morning-glories climbing over the front doors; for the
cottages were relics of the time when the city was a village and this
region was the outlying fringe, beyond the end of the wooden sidewalks.
Now, however, it was almost upon the edge of commerce;—there was smoke
in the air, and through the haze were seen rising, a few blocks to the
south, the blue silhouettes of dozens of office buildings, the
court-house tower, and the giant oblong of the first skyscraper, the
First National Bank, eleven stories high. Moreover, one of the white
cottages had for next-door neighbour the first apartment house to be
built in the city;—it was just finished, rose seven stories above its
little neighbour, and was significantly narrow. The ground here had
already become costly.
Mrs. Savage’s gray picket fence joined the white picket fence of the
overshadowed white cottage and her house was a good sample of
four-square severity, built of brick and painted gray, with two noble
old walnut trees in front, one on each side of the brick walk that led
from the gate to the small veranda. Here she had lived during little
less than half a century;—that is to say, ever since her house had been
called “the finest residence in the city,” when her husband built it in
the decade before the Civil War. Here, too, she “preferred to die,” as
she said brusquely when her daughter wished her to come and live at the
Oliphants’, after Mr. Savage’s death. She was still “fully able to keep
house” for herself, she added, and expected to do so until Smith and
Lieven came for her; Smith and Lieven being the undertakers who had
conducted all the funerals in her family.
But at ninety-two it is impossible to withhold all concessions; even a
lady whose pioneer father whipped her when she was fifteen must bend a
little; and although Mrs. Savage still declined to sit in a comfortable
chair, she took a daily nap in the afternoon. She had just risen and
descended to her parlour, and settled herself by the large front window,
when the two young people, coming along the sidewalk, reached the north
end of her picket fence.
She did not recognize them at first; for, although her eyes “held out,”
as she said, they held out not quite well enough for her to see faces
except as ivory or pinkish blurs, unless they were close to her.
However, the two figures interested her; and because of their slow
approach and something intimate in the way they seemed to be communing,
she guessed that they might be lovers. To her surprise, they halted at
her gate, but, instead of coming in, continued their conversation there
for several moments. Then, though they appeared loath to separate, each
took both of the other’s hands for a moment, in an impulsive gesture
distinctly expressive of emotion, and the woman’s figure went down the
street, walking hurriedly, while the man’s came in at the gate and
approached the front door. Mrs. Savage recognized her grandson, but no
slightest change in her expression or attitude marked the moment of
recognition.
Upon the sound of the bell, the old coloured man who had been her
servant for thirty years came softly through the hall, but instead of
opening the door to the visitor he presented himself before his mistress
in the parlour. He was a thin old man of the darkest brown, neat and
erect, with a patient expression, a beautifully considerate manner, and
a tremulous tenor voice. In addition, his given name was both romantic
and religious: Nimbus.
“You like to receive callers, Miz Savage?” he inquired. “Doorbell ring.”
“I heard it,” the old lady informed him somewhat crisply. “Have you any
reason to suppose I can’t hear my own doorbell?”
“No’m.”
“Then why did you see fit to mention that it rang?”
“I don’ know, ’m. You hear good as what I do, Miz Savage,” he returned
apologetically. “I dess happen say she ring. Mean nothin’ ’t all. You
like me bring ’em in or say ain’t home, please?”
“It’s my grandson, Dan.”
“Yes’m,” said Nimbus, turning to the door; “I go git him.”
He went out into the broad hall and opened the door to the thoughtful
young man waiting there, who shook hands with him and greeted him
warmly; whereupon Nimbus glowed visibly, expressing great pleasure and
cordiality. “My goo’nuss me!” he said. “Hope I be close on hand when you
git ready shed them clo’es, Mist’ Dan. You’ grammaw cert’n’y be
overjoice’ to see you ag’in. She settin’ in polluh waitin’ fer you, if
you kinely leave me rest you’ silk hat an’ gole-head cane. _My_, look at
all the gole on nat cane!”
Receiving this emblem of state with murmurous reverence, he solicitously
bore it to the marble-topped table as the young man entered the room
where his grandmother awaited him. She sat by the broad window, which
had been the first plate-glass window in the town, and in her cap with
lace lappets and her full, dark gown, she was not unsuggestive, in spite
of her great age, of Whistler’s portrait of his mother. Certainly, until
her grandson took her hand and sat down beside her, she was as
motionless as a portrait.
“Grandma,” he said remorsefully, “I’m afraid you feel mighty hurt with
me. I know it looked pretty selfish of me not to come home sooner, so we
could go ahead and get grandpa’s estate settled up. I expect you think I
haven’t been very thoughtful of you, and you certainly have got a right
to feel kind of cross with me, but the truth is——”
“No,” she interrupted quietly. “Your father was too busy to attend to
the estate himself, and I didn’t want Harlan because I know he’d spend
all his time criticizing; and besides he didn’t offer to do it in the
first place, and you did. But your father hired a lawyer for me, and the
work’s about finished.”
“I know what you think of me——” he began but again she interrupted.
“No; you behaved naturally in staying away. Young people always say they
like to help old people, but it isn’t natural. Mankind are all really
just Indians, naturally. In some of the lower Indian tribes they kill
off everybody that gets old and useless, and that’s really the instinct
of the young in what we call civilization. We old people understand how
you young people really think of us.”
“Oh, my!” the young man groaned. “I was afraid you were a little hurt
with me, but I didn’t dream you’d feel _this_ way about it.”
“No,” she said;—“you were having too good a time to dream how anybody’d
feel about anything. Your father and mother worried some about you, and
once or twice your father talked of going East to see what you were up
to. They were afraid you were running wild, but I told ’em they needn’t
fret about that.”
“Did you, grandma?”
“Yes. Your running wild would never amount to much; you come of too
steady a stock on both sides not to get over it and settle down. No;
what I was afraid of is just what I expect has happened.”
“What’s that?” Dan asked indulgently. “What do you think’s happened,
grandma? Think I got too extravagant and threw away a lot of money?”
“No,” she replied; and to his uncomfortable amazement continued grimly:
“I expect you’ve fallen in love with some no-account New York girl and
want to marry her.”
“Grandma!”
“I do!” the old lady asserted. “Isn’t that what’s been the matter with
you?”
She spoke challengingly, with an angry note in the challenge, and Dan’s
colour, ruddy after his walk, grew ruddier;—the phrase “no-account New
York girl” hurt and offended him, even though his grandmother knew
nothing whatever of Lena McMillan. “You’re very much mistaken,” he said
gravely.
“I hope so,” Mrs. Savage returned. “Who was that you were talking to out
at my front gate?”
“Martha Shelby.”
“Martha? That’s all right,” she said, and added abruptly: “If you’ve got
to marry somebody you ought to marry her.”
“What?”
“If you’ve got to marry somebody,” this uncomfortable old lady repeated,
“why don’t you marry Martha?”
“Why, that’s just preposterous!” Dan protested. “The last person in the
world Martha’d ever think of marrying would be me, and the last person
I’d ever think of marrying would be Martha.”
“Why?”
“Why?” he repeated incredulously. “Why, because we aren’t in love with
each other and never _could_ be! Never in the world!”
“It isn’t necessary,” Mrs. Savage informed him. “You’d get along better
if you weren’t. Martha comes of good stock, and she’s like her stock.”
“There are other ‘good stocks’ in the country,” he thought proper to
remind her gently. “There are a few people in New York of fairly good
‘stock’, you know, grandma.”
“Maybe a few,” she said;—“but not our kind. The surest way to make
misery is to mix stocks. You come of the best stock in the country, and
you’ll be mighty sick some day if you go mixing it with a bad one.”
“But good gracious!” he cried, “who’s talking of my mixing it with
a——”
“Never mind,” she interrupted crossly. “I know what those New York girls
are like.”
“But, grandma——”
“I do,” she insisted. “They don’t know anything in the world except
French and soirées, and it’s no wonder when you look at their stocks!”
“Grandma——”
“Listen to me,” she bade him sharply. “The best stocks in England were
the yeoman stocks; you ought to know that much, yourself, after all
these years you’ve spent at school and college. The strongest in mind
and body out of the English yeoman stocks came to America; they fought
the Indians and the French and the British and got themselves a country
of their own. Then, after that, the strongest in mind and body out of
those stocks came out here and opened this new country and built it up.
All they’ve got left in the East now are the remnants that didn’t have
gumption and get-up enough to strike out for the new land. The only
thing that keeps the East going is the people that emigrate back there
from here in the second and third generations. Don’t you mix your stock
with any remnants! D’you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he meekly replied, dismayed not only by the extremity of
the discouraging old lady’s view upon “stocks” and “New York girls,” but
also by her shrewdness in divining the cause of his long absence.
Nevertheless, he ventured to protest again, though feebly. “I think if
you could see New York nowadays, grandma, you wouldn’t think it’s a city
built by ‘remnants,’ exactly.”
“I don’t have to see it,” she retorted. “I know history; and besides, I
was there with your grandfather in eighteen fifty-nine. We stayed two
weeks at the Astor House, and your grandfather was mighty glad to get
back here to home cooking. Even then all the smart men in New York came
from somewhere else. Outside of them and the politicians, the only New
York people you ever hear anything about are the ones that have had just
barely gumption enough to be stingy.”
“What? Why, grandma——”
“They never made anything; they’ve just barely got the gumption to hold
on to what’s been left to ’em,” she insisted. “As soon as anybody gets
money, everybody else sets in to try to get it away from him. They try
to get him to give it away; they try to trade him out of it, or to
swindle him out of it, or to steal it from him. Everybody wants money
and the only way to get it is to get it from somebody else; but for all
that, the lowest form of owning money is just inheriting it and sitting
down on it; and that’s just about all they know how to do, these New
York folks you seem to think so much of!”
“But my goodness, grandma!” the troubled young man exclaimed. “I haven’t
said——”
She cut him off again, for she was far from the conclusion of her
discourse; and he got the impression—a correct one—that during his
protracted absence she had been bottling within herself the considerable
effervescence she now released upon him. She interrupted him with great
spirit. “You wait till I’m through, and then you can have your say! I
know these New York girls better than you do. You aren’t capable of
knowing anything about women anyway, at your age. You’re the kind of
young man that idealizes anything that’ll give you half a chance to
idealize it. You are! I’ve watched you. What do girls mean to a young
man like you? If he doesn’t think they’re good-looking, they don’t mean
anything at all to him; it’s just the same as if they weren’t living.
But if he thinks some silly little thing is pretty, and she takes
special notice of him, that’s enough;—he’s liable to start right in and
act like a crazy man over her! She may be the biggest fool, and the
meanest one, too, on earth; he thinks she’s got all the goodness and all
the wisdom in the universe! You can’t help getting into that state about
her; but after you’ve been married awhile the gloss’ll wear off and
you’ll begin to notice what you’ve tied yourself up to—to live with
till you’re dead!”
“But I haven’t told you——”
Again she disregarded him. “_I_ know these New York highty-tighties!”
she said. “Your grandfather and I went to Saratoga the year after the
war, and we spent a month there. We saw a plenty of ’em! They aren’t fit
to do anything but flirt and talk French and go to soirées. They’re the
most ignorant people I ever met in my life. They’re so ignorant if you
asked their opinion of Lalla Rookh they wouldn’t know what you were
talking about; but they think you’re funny if you don’t know that some
fancy milliner of theirs keeps store on Broadway and not on the Bowery.
That’s about the measure of ’em.”
“Well, not nowadays, exactly,” her grandson said indulgently. “Some of
the ones you saw at Saratoga thirty or forty years ago may have been
like that, grandma, but nowadays——”
“Nowadays,” she said, taking the word up sharply, “they’re just the
same. They fooled the young men then just the same as they fool ’em now.
They make a young man like you think they know everything, because
they’re pretty and talk that affected way Harlan does.”
“But with them it isn’t affected, grandma. It’s natural with them.
They’ve _always_——”
But the obdurate old lady contradicted him instantly. “It’s not! It
isn’t natural for any human being to talk like that! You mustn’t bring
one of those girls out here to live, Dan.”
“Grandma”—he began in an uneasy voice; “Grandma, I came here to tell
you——”
“Yes, I was afraid of it,” she said. “I was afraid of it.”
“Afraid of what?”
A plaintive frown appeared upon her forehead before she answered. She
sighed deeply, as if the increased rapidity of her breathing had made
her insecure of continuing to breathe at all; and her frail hands,
folded in her lap, moved nervously. “Don’t do it, Dan,” she said. “You
ought to wait a few years before you marry, anyway. You’re so young, and
one of those New York girls wouldn’t understand things here; she
wouldn’t know enough not to feel superior. You’d just make misery for
yourself.”
But at this he laughed confidently. “You don’t know the one I’m thinkin’
of,” he said. “You’ve guessed something of what I came to tell you,
grandma, but you’ve certainly missed fire about her! I’ll show you.” And
from his breast pocket he took an exquisite flat case of blue leather
and silver; opened it, and handed it to her. “There’s her photograph.
I’d like to see if you think _she’s_ the kind you’ve been talkin’
about!”
Mrs. Savage put on the eye-glasses she wore fastened to a thin chain
round her neck, and examined the photograph of Lena McMillan. She looked
at it steadily for a long minute, then handed it back to her grandson,
removed her glasses, and, without a word, again folding her hands in her
lap, looked out of the window.
Under these discomfiting circumstances Dan said, as hopefully as he
could, “You’ve changed your mind now, haven’t you, grandma?”
“On account of that picture?” she asked, without altering her attitude.
“Yes. Don’t you think she’s—don’t you think she’s——”
“Don’t I think she’s what?” Mrs. Savage inquired in a dead voice.
“Don’t you think she’s perfect?”
“Perfect?” Expressionlessly, she turned and looked at him. “What are
your plans, Dan?”
“You mean, when do we expect to——”
“No. What business are you going into?”
“Well——” He paused doubtfully; “I still hope—I mean, if I don’t have
to go to New York to live——”
“So?” she interrupted with seeming placidity. “She declines to come here
to live, does she? She hates it here, does she, already?”
“I don’t think she would,” he said quickly. “Not if she once got used to
it. You see she doesn’t know anything about it; she’s never been west of
Rochester, and she only _thinks_ she wouldn’t like it. I’ve been doin’
my best to persuade her.”
“But you couldn’t?”
“Oh, I haven’t given up,” he said. “I think when the time comes——”
“But if she won’t, ‘when the time comes’,” Mrs. Savage suggested;—“then
instead of living here, where you’ve grown up and want to live, you’ll
go and spend your life in New York. Is that it?”
“Well, I——”
“So you’d do it,” she said, “just to please the face in that
photograph!”
“You don’t understand, grandma,” he returned, and he hurriedly passed a
handkerchief across his distressed forehead. “You see, it isn’t only
Lena herself don’t think much of our part of the country. You see, her
family——”
“Ah!” the grim lady interrupted. “She’s got a family, has she? Indeed?”
“Great goodness!” he groaned, “I mean her father and mother and her
sister and her aunts and her married sister, and everybody. They’re
important people, you see.”
“Are they? What do they do that’s important?”
“It isn’t so much what they do exactly,” he explained, “it’s what they
_are_. You see, they’re descended from General McMillan and——”
“General McMillan? Never heard of him. What was he a general of? New
York militia? Knights of Pythias, maybe?”
“I’m not exactly certain,” Dan admitted, again applying his handkerchief
to his forehead. “I think he had something to do with history before the
Revolution. I don’t know just what, but anyhow they all feel it was
pretty important; and you see to them, why I’m just nobody at all, and
of course they must feel I’m pretty crude. It’s true, too, because I
_am_ crude compared to Lena; and for a good while her family were more
or less against any such engagement. Of course, the way they think about
_my_ family is even worse than the way you think about _them_, grandma;
and naturally she says herself they’re positive it’d be a terrible
sacrifice for her to come and live out here. I mean that’s the way they
look at it.”
“Of course they do,” said Mrs. Savage. “That’s the way those New York
people at Saratoga thought about this part of the country. They’re just
the same nowadays, I told you; they haven’t got the kind of brains that
can learn anything. Does this photograph girl herself talk about what a
‘sacrifice’ it would be for her to live here?”
“Lena McMillan is a noble girl,” Dan informed her earnestly. “She feels
a lot of respect for her family’s wishes, and besides she doesn’t like
the idea of leavin’ New York herself; but I don’t remember her usin’ the
word ‘sacrifice’ exactly. She doesn’t put it that way.”
“What about _you_? Do you put it that way? Do you think it would be a
sacrifice for her to come and live here?”
“I?” Dan was obviously astonished to be asked such a question. “Why, my
goodness!” he exclaimed, “I wouldn’t be beggin’ her to try it if I
thought so, would I? If I can just get her to try it I know she’ll like
it. How could anybody help likin’ it?”
“You’re pretty liable to find out how this photograph girl will help
it!” his grandmother prophesied, and promptly checked him as he began to
protest against her repeated definition of Lena as “this photograph
girl.” She retorted, “Tut, tut!” as a snub to his protest, then
inquired: “What business do you expect to go into, if you live in New
York?”
“I don’t know,” he said gloomily. “I don’t see what I could do there.”
“What will you do if you stay here?”
At that he brightened instantly. “Why, I think I’ve got hold of a big
idea, grandma. I began to think about it last September, and it’s been
in my mind all the time I was away;—I’ve been goin’ over it and workin’
it out. It’s something would make a mighty good profit for me and at the
same time I think it’d be a big thing for this city.”
“Indeed?” she said. “Yes, you’re at the age when everything looks like a
‘big thing.’ Your grandfather used to talk like that when we were first
married.”
“Well, he was one of this city’s most successful men, wasn’t he? He did
do big things, didn’t he?”
“That was in the early days when he kept us poor,” she said, with a
short laugh of extreme dryness. “He had ideas about going into things to
make this a greater city, and get ‘a mighty good profit’ for himself,
the way you talk now—but what finally made his money was keeping _out_
of big schemes. It was what I kept him from doing that made us well off,
not what he did. We saved and went into safe things like the First
National Bank stock. When it comes to you and Harlan, after I’m gone,
you mustn’t ever sell that bank stock, Dan. What is this ‘big idea’ you
spoke of?”
“It’s the old Ornaby farm, grandma.”
“Oh, I see,” she assented with ready satire. “Yes; this photograph girl
will make a fine farmer’s wife!”
“No, she won’t,” he returned good-naturedly. “That farm lies right where
this city’s bound to grow to. I want to take the money grandpa left me
and buy it. Then I’ll lay it out in lots and make an Addition of it.”
“So?” she said. “That’s the ‘big idea,’ is it?”
“That’s it, grandma.”
She shook her head in pitying skepticism. “You can’t carry it out. In
the first place, the town’ll never grow that far out——”
“Yes, it will,” he interrupted eagerly. “Why, in three years at the
longest——”
“No,” she said; “it won’t. Not in three years and not in thirty. Anyhow,
your grandfather only left you twenty-five thousand dollars. You’d
better keep it and not throw it away, Dan.”
“I can get the Ornaby farm for seventeen thousand,” he informed her.
“That’ll leave eight thousand to clear off the lots and put asphalt
streets through and——”
“Put asphalt streets through!” she echoed. “How many miles of asphalt
streets do you expect to build with eight thousand dollars after you’ve
cleared the lots and advertised enough to boom an Addition?”
“I’ve been hopin’ I’d get help on that,” he said, his colour heightening
a little. “I thought maybe I could get Harlan to come in with the
twenty-five thousand grandpa left him. If he does——”
“He won’t. Harlan isn’t the kind to risk anything. He won’t.”
“Well, then,” Dan said, “I’ll go ahead and get other people. I’m goin’
to do it, grandma, if I have to take an ax and a shovel and a
wheelbarrow out there and do it all by myself. I’ve been thinkin’ it
over a long time, and I know it’s a big thing.” He laughed a little at
his own enthusiasm, but again declared, with earnest determination:
“Yes, ma’am! I’m goin’ to build ‘Ornaby Addition.’”
But his grandmother’s compassionate skepticism was not lessened. On the
contrary, she asked him quietly: “You’re going to build ‘Ornaby
Addition’ at the same time you expect to be living in New York with this
photograph girl for a wife? How do you think you’ll manage it, Dan?”
“Oh, she’ll come here,” he said. “I know she will, when I make her see
what a big chance this idea of mine gives us. I think I can get her to
try it, anyhow; and if she’ll just do that it’ll come out all right.”
“You think she’ll be a great help to you, do you, while you’re working
with a wheelbarrow out on Ornaby’s farm?”
“Do I?” he exclaimed, and added radiantly: “‘A help?’ Why, grandma,
she—she’ll be a great deal more than a help; she’ll be an inspiration!
That’s exactly what she’ll be, grandma.”
Old Mrs. Savage looked at him fixedly, sighed, and spoke as in a
reverie. “Ah, me! How many, many young men I’ve seen believing such
things in my long time here! How many, many I’ve seen that were going to
do big things, and how many that thought some no-account girl was going
to be their inspiration!”
“Grandma!” he cried indignantly, and rose from his chair. “You haven’t
any right to speak of her like that.”
“No right?” she said quietly. “No, I s’pose not. I wonder how many
hundred times in my life I’ve been told I hadn’t any right to speak the
truth. It must be so.”
“But it _isn’t_ the truth,” Dan protested, and in a plaintive agitation
he moved toward the door. “I showed you a photograph of the sweetest,
noblest, most beautiful woman that’s ever come into my life, and you
speak of her as—as—well, as you just did speak of her, grandma! I
wouldn’t hurt your feelings for the world, but I—well, you aren’t fair.
I don’t want to say any more than that, so I expect I better go.”
“Wait!” she said sharply; and he halted in the doorway. “You wait a
minute, young man. I’m going to say my last say to you, and you better
listen!”
“Yes, of course I will, if you want me to, grandma,” he assented, as he
came back into the room and stood before her. “Only I hope you won’t say
anything against her; and I don’t think you ought to call it your ‘last
say’ to me. I’m sure you won’t stop speakin’ to me.”
“Won’t I?” she asked; and he was aware of a strange pathos in her
glance, and that her head constantly shook a little. “Won’t I? I’m going
to stop speaking to everybody, Dan, before long.”
“But you look so well, grandma; you oughtn’t to talk like that.”
“Never mind. My talking is about over, but I’m going to tell you
something you may remember when I can’t talk any more at all. Your
father and mother won’t even try to have any influence with you; they
haven’t raised their children the way I did mine. Your father and mother
have always been too easy-going with you to really help you by
disciplining you when you wanted to do anything wrong, and they’ll both
act the gentle fool with you now, just as they always have about
everything. They won’t stop you from going ahead with this photograph
girl.”
“No,” Dan said gently;—“and nothing could stop me, grandma. I told you
she’s the finest, most beautiful——”
“Be quiet!” the old lady cried. “How much of that same sort of twaddle
do you suppose a body’s heard in a life of ninety-two years? How many
times do you suppose I’ve had to listen to just such stuff? Good
heavens!”
“But, grandma——”
“You listen to _me_!” she said with sudden ferocity. “You don’t know
anything about the girl, and you don’t know anything about yourself. At
your age you don’t know anything about anything. You don’t even know you
don’t know. And another thing you don’t know is, how much you’ve told me
about this girl and her family without knowing it.”
“Grandma, I told you they’re fine people and——”
“Fine people!” she said bitterly. “Oh, yes! And how have they treated
you?”
“Why, aren’t they givin’ me their—their dearest treasure? Doesn’t that
show how they——”
“Yes, doesn’t it?” she interrupted. “It shows how much of a treasure
_they_ think she is!”
“Grandma——”
“You listen! You’re a splendid young man, Dan Oliphant. You’re
good-looking; you’re honourable as the daylight; you’re kindhearted, and
you’d be just as polite to a nigger or a dog as you would to the
President; and anybody can tell all that about you by just looking at
you once. But this good-for-nothing girl and her good-for-nothing family
have made you feel you weren’t anybody at all, and ought to feel
flattered to scrub their doormat! Don’t tell me! They have! And because
you let yourself get as soft as a ninny over a silly little pretty face,
you truckle to ’em.”
“Grandma!” He laughed despairingly. “I haven’t been truckling to
anybody.”
“You have, and she’ll keep you at it all your life!” the old lady said
angrily. “_I_ know what that face means. I’ve seen a thousand just like
it! She’ll use you and make you truckle to _be_ used! And if you give in
to her and live in her town, she’ll despise you. If you make her come
and live in your town, she’ll hate you. But she’ll always keep you
truckling. Your only chance is to get rid of her.”
“Grandma,” he said desperately;—“I’m sorry, but I can’t hear you talk
this way about the sweetest, the most perfect, the loveliest——”
“Get rid of her!” she cried. And as the distressed young man went out
into the hall she leaned forward in her chair, shaking at him a
piteously bent and emaciated forefinger. “You get rid of her, if you
don’t want to die in the gutter! Get rid of her!”