It was quite natural that Minnie should cry. Lionel admired her for not
crying much more. She dried her eyes, smiled ruefully, and got up.
“I must get your dinner ready, darling,” she said.
“No hurry. Rest a bit, you poor girl! By Jove! That was a beastly scene!
No wonder you’re upset.”
“I’m not upset now,” she said, quietly. “A person like that couldn’t
affect me very much.”
And with a splendid Defoe grandeur, she went about her work.
As had her grandmother and Frankie, so did Lionel admire her
housekeeping. Because she was always busy and always wearing an apron,
he believed that she must accomplish an incredible amount of work. There
was a great deal of dust about, the meals were always late and often
burned, but that all went to prove what a lot there was to be done. She
was so hurried, so anxious, always thinking of his comfort.
And nothing but his comfort. Never of his soul, his spirit. She got the
dinner on the table and sat down opposite, watching with a frown to see
that he ate enough. She still wore her apron, and her hair was very
untidy, but he was used to that now. Anyway he felt that he must never
look upon Minnie with physical eyes, he was to treasure her only for her
sublime moral worth, her self-sacrifice, her stern sense of duty, her
noble womanhood.
“Eat the pudding, dear,” she urged. “It’s all made of milk. It will do
you good.”
He smiled at her and obeyed.
After dinner she made him sit in his comfortable chair on the porch with
a cigar, while she washed the dishes. She would never let him help her.
Pale and exhausted, doing everything in the most irrational way, it was
quite nine o’clock before she could join him.
At last she came out on the porch and sat down near him, creaking back
and forth in her particular rocking-chair. Out of the darkness her voice
came suddenly and amazingly.
“I suppose we’ll have to patch it up.”
“What?” he asked, puzzled, thinking of possible leaks in roof or
ceiling.
“This quarrel. With your sister-in-law.”
“I shouldn’t call it a ‘quarrel’” he said. “She insulted you, grossly. I
don’t see how or why it should be ‘patched up.’”
“I’m willing to overlook it,” said Minnie. “Anyway, what does it matter
what such a woman says? It won’t do for you to quarrel with your
brother.”
“I don’t intend to. We’ll simply let the thing drop. But of course Julie
can’t come here again, and we won’t enter her house.”
“It isn’t her house; it’s your brother’s----”
“I say! What are you driving at, Minnie? Haven’t you any pride?”
She began to cry.
“We’ll need a great deal of help from Horace,” she said, “and she’s
quite capable of turning him against us. This baby’s going to be a
terrible expense.”
He rebelled rather vigorously at first, but of course, in the end,
succumbed. Minnie’s sole view of the expected baby as an anxiety and a
crushing responsibility had begun to infect him. He too commenced to
see it only as an expense that must be met--and met by Horace. She
reiterated ceaselessly that it was their “duty” to this child to
humiliate themselves, sacrifice all pride and independence. A curious
doctrine, that the parents exist only to sustain their offspring,
forever deprived of any original existence, any private aims, living
only to convey physical nourishment.