"You have made me forget what I was about to say," he began.
"I am sorry, father."
"You are not sorry; you are glad. You are always thwarting and going against me. What makes you speak to me of your mother in a voice of reproach? Tell me that. You have been egged on to it!" And he thumped his crutch stick viciously on the floor.
"I have not been egged on to it," said Phœbe, with spirit; "and it is entirely a fancy of yours that I spoke in a tone of reproach."
"It is no fancy I am never wrong—never. Your mother died when you were almost a baby in arms. You have no remembrance of her; it isn't possible that you can remember her."
"I do not remember her, father," said Phœbe, with a touch of sadness in her tone; "but Aunt Leth has a portrait of her, which I often and often look at, and I am glad to know that I am like her. You surely can't be displeased at that?"
"Aunt Leth! Aunt Leth! Aunt Leth!" he exclaimed, fretfully; and then, with unreasonable vehemence, "Why do you try to irritate me?"
"I do not try," said Phœbe, "and I do not thwart and go against you."
"You do—in everything. You don't care to please me; you don't take the least trouble to carry out my wishes. Being confined, on and off, to this house for years by my cursed rheumatism, unable, as you know, to go to my London office, and forced to trust to a man who may be robbing me secretly all the time he is in my service, I have endeavoured to train you to be of some assistance to me, and to make up my accounts here when I am too weak and in too much pain to make them up for myself. What has been the result? Upon looking over the papers you have written I have seldom found one of them correct. Nothing but errors in the casting-up and in the calculations of interest—errors which would have been the ruin of me had I taken your work for granted. It wouldn't matter so much if your mistakes were in my favour, but they are not; they are always against me. The sum total is always too little instead of too much. Is this what I have a right to expect from a child I have nourished and fed?"
"I can't help it, father. I have told you over and over again that I have no head for figures."