It was a commonplace, she said, that the new Twentieth Century was the age of the annihilation of distances; people talked from New York to Chicago over a wire; the Atlantic was crossed in six days, the American continent in four; and her father could remember when it took him three weeks to get to Philadelphia; he “wouldn’t mind being taken care of by correspondence.”
Old Hickory, well-warranted in his outburst, replied that he didn’t “need any takin’ care of, thank you”—he was tired of being bossed to death, and he wanted her to understand she was mighty welcome to go and stay as long as she had a mind to! If she remained at home, he wouldn’t know when she might be draggin’ him off again without his exactly knowin’ how it happened. It was “curious,” he continued; he had sense enough never to let her interfere with him in his business; but in other matters he never knew when he mightn’t find himself in some dog-gone place he didn’t want to be in—at a plague-taken pink tea maybe, or even right spang in the middle of Europe in some heaven-forsaken garlic heap, with nothin’ to think about but old dead monks and nothin’ to do but hate the smell. If Martha liked hangin’ around those old worn-out nations that never showed a sign o’ life except advertisin’ chocolate and keepin’ their fertilizer right under their front parlour window for fear somebody’d steal it, why, she was certainly good and welcome to all she wanted of ’em! For himself, he had his business to ’tend to; and he didn’t want any aunt Ella to pester him, either; “aunt Ella” being his widowed sister, whom Martha had proposed as a housekeeper in substitute for herself. He was full and able—thank you again!—to get up in the morning and eat his ham and eggs without somebody’s pinning a bib around his neck, and he believed he knew how to wash and go to bed at night without any fussy woman fixin’ up his bureau every other day, so as to hide his nightshirts from him! Altogether, he was lookin’ forward to a little rest and liberty, thank you!
So Martha had gone with his earnest consent; for his complaint of her did not lack reason—she was headstrong and a compelling daughter—and she stayed until she had her fill of Italy for that while. Meantime, the abandoned father contentedly lived alone, except for his negro servants, and declared that at last he was his own man and began to feel as if he owned his own house; he felt that way for the first time since his daughter was born, he said. But a different view of his condition was maintained by a member of the household next door.
“A fine exhibition of filial duty!” Lena cried, in one of the irritated moods that returned upon her as the growing Henry Daniel began to be a little boy instead of a little baby. When he was a noisy little boy during the day his mother often became reminiscent, not happily, by the time his father came home in the evening. “You told me once she had a heart as big as she was,” Lena went on. “It looks like it, doesn’t it? Leaving that poor old man alone over there, month after month and year after year!”
Dan listened absently, his mind on a new customer for a lot. “Who you talkin’ about now?”
“You know! That big girl of yours.”
“Martha?” he said, his tone a weary one instantly. “How often have I told you she never was any girl of mine, big or little? What’s started you on that again?”
“I shouldn’t think you’d expect it would take much to start me,” Lena exclaimed, “when you remember you gave me your sacred promise I should have a year in Europe——”
“Oh, Lordy! Have we got to go all over that again?”
“—And when you remember you deliberately broke your word to me,” Lena went on, “and haven’t ever even made the slightest effort to keep it! You hold me here, suffocating in this place, year after year——”