‘It is an end of all chance for me. When she had always taught me to look to it! It is absolute cheating.’
‘Of late she never led us to expect anything.’
‘No; and you never took pains to stand well with her. Some people—’
‘O, Arthur, Arthur!’
‘Well, don’t be foolish! You could not help it. Her spitefulness was past reckoning. To see her malice! She knew John and Theodora would not let me be wronged, so she passes them over, and my mother too, for fear it should be made up to me. Was ever man served so before? My own son, as if to make it more aggravating!’
At an unlucky moment Johnnie ran in, and pulled his mother’s dress. ‘Mamma, may Helen dig in the bed by the garden door!’
‘Go away!’ said Arthur, impatiently. ‘We can’t have you bothering here.’
Though inattentive and indifferent to his children, he had never been positively unkind, and the anger of his tone filled the timid child’s eyes with tears, as he looked appealingly at his mother, and moved away, lingering, and beginning a trembling, ‘but, mamma—’
‘Don’t stay here!’ cried Arthur, in an indiscriminating fit of anger, striking his hand on the table. ‘Did I not order you to go this moment, sir?’
Poor Johnnie fled, without hearing his mother’s consoling ‘I’ll come;’ which only, with her look of grief, further irritated Arthur. ‘Ay, ay! That’s always the way. Nothing but the boy, whenever I want you.’