All these things trouble him greatly and distract his attention. He sits up far into the night poring over his own work that was such pleasure a few months ago, and he can hardly keep his mind on what so delighted him then. There is quite too much on every hand, and he must add to it family complications. His beautiful home is full of jarring elements. Even Cecil grows naughty with the superabundant vitality of childhood, and is inclined to tyrannize over Violet, who often submits for very lack of spirit, and desire of love.
They are always together, these two. They take long drives in the carriage, and Mrs. Grandon complains that everything must be given over to that silly, red-haired thing! Gertrude does battle for the hair one morning.
"I do not call it red," she says, with a decision good to hear from the languid woman. "It is a kind of bright brown, chestnut. Mrs. McLeod's is red."
"Auburn, my dear," retorts Mrs. Grandon mockingly. "If you are sensitively polite in the one instance, you might be so in the other. One is light red, the other dark red."
"One is an ugly bricky red," persists Gertrude, "and no one would call the other red at all."
"I call it red," very positively.
"Very well," says the daughter, angrily, "you cannot make it other than the very handsome tint it is, no matter what you call it."
"There has been a very foolish enthusiasm about red hair, I know, but that has mostly died out," replies the mother, contemptuously, and keeps the last word.
Gertrude actually allows herself to be persuaded into a drive with "the children" that afternoon. She and Violet happen to stumble upon a book they have both read, a lovely and touching German story, and they discuss it thoroughly. Violet is fond of German poems.
"Then you read German?" Gertrude says. "I did a little once, but it was such a bore. I haven't the strength for anything but the very lightest amusement."