“Upon my word, Louisa,” she said good-temperedly, “Bob seems to have made a most flattering impression on you.”
Miss Overton smiled. “He is a charming person,” she answered. “Apropos, Mrs. Raikes says that the three best things in the world are a good novel, a muskmelon, and a handsome cousin.”
“She has not the last, I am sure, or she would have learned to value it less highly,” Nellie returned.
Miss Overton did not immediately answer. They had walked to the front door, and as she climbed into her trap, she observed that it was warm.
Nellie put up her hand to her face. It was warm. She hoped her own heightened color had not suggested Louisa’s remark.
The heat, she could see, wore on her uncle. He looked older and frailer than ever. Even Vickers showed it after three almost sleepless nights; and Emmons’s temper, she thought, was not quite as smooth as usual. He scolded her about Overton’s manner to Bob. The great man had actually sought him out in the train and had been seen walking along the platform with a hand through his arm. Emmons thought it a mistake to show approval of such a person as Bob.
“Really, I think you are a little too severe, James,” she answered; and all she could say for herself was that she showed less irritation than she felt. “It seems hard if, as long as Bob is behaving well, he should be denied all human companionship.”
“Oh, if you consider that Bob is entirely rehabilitated by two or three weeks without actual crime——”
Nellie turned away. She thought the heat was affecting her temper, too. Mr. Lee’s slavish devotion and Emmons’s continual criticism of her cousin alike angered her. She found herself wondering whether James were not rather a trying employer—whether he did not take it out of Bob down town. For the first time she felt a little sorry for her cousin. At least he never complained.
He did not complain, but a steady contempt for Emmons grew in his mind—a contempt which would have been hatred, if he had really been as bound down as Emmons thought him. As it was, he still played daily with the idea of flight. Certainly, he told himself, he would wait no longer than to get the farm on its feet under a new farmer.