"I hate everything," he returned desperately; "but it wouldn't be square to leave him now when he's so cut up on my account."
We were both of us, I am sure, too moved to have much talk, and Tom did not stay long. He went off rather abruptly, with hardly a good-by; but I think I understood. I am glad he has the pluck to stand by poor old Deacon Daniel; but he must learn to be fond of baby. That will be a comfort to him.
June 15. George seems to me to be almost beside himself. I cannot comprehend what his wife is doing to him. She has apparently already come to realize that she is not succeeding in Tuskamuck, and is determined to conquer by display and showy ways of living. She cannot know us very well if she supposes that such means will do here.
Her latest move I find it hard to forgive her. I do not understand how George can have done it, no matter how much she urged him; but I am of course profoundly ignorant how such a woman controls a man. I am afraid one thing which made him attractive to me was that he was so willing to be influenced, but we see a man in a light entirely different when it is another woman who shapes his life. What once seemed a fine compliance takes on a strange appearance of weakness when we are no longer the moving force; but I think I do myself no more than justice when I feel that at least I tried always to influence George for his own good.
Poor Miss Charlotte came over directly after breakfast this morning to tell me. She had been brooding over it half the night, poor soul, and her eyes looked actually withered with crying and lack of sleep.
"I know I exaggerate it," she kept saying, "and of course he didn't mean to insult me; but to think anybody dared to ask me to sell the house, the Kendall house that our family has lived in for four generations! It would have killed my father if he had known I should live to come to this!"
I tried to soothe her, and to make her believe that in offering to buy her house George had thought only of how much he admired it, and not at all of her feelings, which he could not understand.
"Of course he could not understand my feelings," Miss Charlotte said, with a bitterness which I am sure was unconscious. "He never had a family, and I ought to remember that."
She grew somewhat more calm as she unburdened her heart. She told me George had praised the place, and said how much he had always liked it. He confessed that it was his wife who first suggested the purchase: she wanted a house where she could entertain and which would be of more importance than the one in which she lived.
"He said," Miss Charlotte went on with a strange mingling of pride and sorrow, "his wife felt that the house in itself would give any family social standing. I don't know how pleased his wife would be if she knew he told me, but he said it. He told me she meant to have repairs and improvements. She must feel as if she owned it already. He said she had an iron dog stored somewhere that she meant to put on the lawn. Think of it, Ruth, an iron dog on our old lawn!"