“Well,” he ventured with a sigh that he knew was pathetic, “if I could only afford it I’d take you and the boy away for the summer, but I’m poor now and old.”
“I couldn’t leave Jerome just now, father, but this talk about your being poor and old is absurd, absurd—and I want you to quit it. Why don’t you go away this summer? Go back to New Hampshire for a rest. It would do you a world of good, and you’ve always said you were going as soon as you could get away from the bank.”
She checked herself, perceiving that she had hit on an unfortunate subject, but her father replied with a return of his old dry humor:
“Yes, the bank was the principal obstacle, and that’s been removed now.”
He set his lips bitterly, and picked up his book again. There was silence in the library, and Emily rested. Now and then her father glanced at her, but she did not move. She lay back in her chair, relaxed in every fiber. He stood her inaction as long as any man could, and then demanded:
“Why don’t you do something? Ain’t you going to read?”
She did rouse herself, obedient to his whims, but she made an excuse:
“I must go up and see how the baby’s getting along.”
“Coming down again?”
“No; leave the door open for Jerome when you come up, will you?”