Lena shook her head, as if in despair of him for not comprehending Martha’s awfulness. “She’s just awful,” she said, implying that if he didn’t perceive for himself why Martha was awful he hadn’t a mind capable of being enlightened. “I suppose you expect me to be intimate with her father, too?”
Dan laughed desperately. “I wouldn’t be apt to ask you to be particularly intimate with anybody his age, Lena.”
“I hope not,” she said, and became rigid, looking at him with a cold hostility that was new to his experience and almost appalled him. “I was afraid you might intend to ask me to be intimate with your grandmother.”
Dan seemed to crumple; he groaned, grew red, apologized unhappily: “Oh, Lord! I was afraid that’d upset you, but I kind of hoped you’d forget it.”
“ ‘Forget it?’ When she did it before everybody! Pawing me—croaking at me——”
“Oh, Lord!” he groaned. “I was afraid it bothered you.”
“ ‘Bothered’ me! Is that your word for it?”
“Nobody else noticed it, Lena,” he went on. “Nobody except just our family——”
“Oh, yes!” she said. “The next-door person you admire so much was one of those that took it all in. She was in at the death—my death, thank you!”
“Lena, you don’t understand at all. Nobody thinks anything about anything grandma does. You see she’s a good deal what people call a ‘privileged character.’ ”