“No,” said the Doctor, the lines of care deepening in his fine, grave face. “There is little left now but the house and farm. Your sentiment regarding the place is such that I cannot permit the sacrifice. The matter will doubtless adjust itself. I shall take some private pupils at the university and perhaps arrange an extra course of lectures. The exigencies of the past two years have been exceptional.”
“But you are already working yourself to death,” protested Miss Lady. “Doctor Wyeth said last week that you could not stand the strain. The rest of us ought to do something; we must do something!”
“You are doing something, my dear. You are relieving me of innumerable burdens in regard to the house and the children. You are proving of great assistance to me in my work, not only by your reading aloud, but by the unfailing sympathy and understanding you give me. Whatever success shall crown my life work will be in a measure due to you.”
She was sitting on a hassock at his feet, and she looked up at him with strange, dumb eyes. His frail body and towering ambition, his loveless life that knew not what it missed, roused in her a pity almost maternal. A fierce resentment rose within her against herself, for not loving him as she knew a husband should be loved. If he had only won her with his heart instead of his head!
The door bell rang and Miss Lady glanced up apprehensively.
“It was the pickle woman,” announced Myrtella, coming in a moment later from the hall. “I sent her about her business.”
“Not Miss Ferney!” cried Miss Lady, springing up and rushing out to call her.
Miss Ferney Foster with much difficulty was persuaded to return and sit on the edge of a hall chair. On New Year's in the past she had always made a formal call at Thornwood and presented the Colonel with a sample of her best wares. The Colonel in turn had invariably sent down cellar for one of the cobwebbiest bottles on the swinging shelf and bestowed it upon her with great gallantry. The indignity of having been refused admittance at the house of the Colonel's daughter was almost more than she could bear.
“Now, tell me about everybody out home,” demanded Miss Lady eagerly. “Begin at the bottom of the hill and go right straight up.”
“I don't know much news,” Miss Ferney said, plucking at the fingers of her cotton gloves. “I been sewing up to the Sequins' all week.”