“I have a great fellow-feeling for him, having grown up the same sort of helpless being as he has been. I should be much worse in his place.”
“Never!” cried Babie. “You would never hang about the house, worrying mother about eating and fiddle-faddles, instead of doing any one useful thing!”
“But if one can’t?”
“I don’t believe in can’t.”
“Happy person!”
“Oh, Duke, you know I never meant health; you know I did not,” and then a pang shot across her as she remembered her past contempt of him whom she now reverenced.
“There are other incapacities,” he said.
“But,” said Babie, half-pleading, half-meditating, “Allen is not stupid. He used to be considered just as clever as Bobus; and he is so now to talk to. Can there be any reason but laziness, and want of application, that makes him never succeed in anything, except in answering riddles and acrostics in the papers? He generally just begins things, and makes mother or Armie finish them for him. He really did set to work and finish up an article on Count Ugolino since we came home from Fordham, and he has tried all the periodicals round, and they won’t have it, not even the editors that know mother!”
“Poor fellow! And you have no pity!”
“Don’t you think it is his own fault?”