"Her health?" he began, anxiously.
"Her health is perfect. It is her independence which worries me. Hence this house! Her father's brother is only too willing to do anything for her, but she declines to be a poor relation. Now such an attitude is ridiculous, because she is a poor relation. To each overture from her uncle she replies with defiance. At one moment she drowns his remarks in a typewriter; at another she flourishes her shorthand in his face; and this summer she fled to America before he had finished what he was saying. Mr. Touchwood, I rely on you!" she exclaimed, thumping him on the shoulder with the fan.
John felt himself to be a very infirm prop for the old lady's ambition, and wobbled in silence while she heaped upon him her aspirations.
"You are a man of the world. All the world's a stage! Prompt her, my dear Mr. Touchwood, prompt her. You must have had a great experience in prompting. I rely on you. Her uncle must be allowed to help her. For pray appreciate that Doris's independence merely benefits charitable institutions, and in my opinion there is a limit to anonymous benevolence. Perhaps you've heard of the Home for Epileptic Gentlewomen? They can have their fits in peace and comfort entirely because my daughter refuses to accept one penny from her uncle. To a mother, of course, such behavior is unaccountable. And what is so unjust is that she won't allow me to accept a penny either, but has even gone so far as to threaten to live with Miss Merritt if I do. Aphorisms of Aphrodite! I can assure you that there are times when I do not regret that I possess an ample sense of humor. If you were a mother, Mr. Touchwood...."
"I am an uncle," said John, quickly. He was not going to let Mrs. Hamilton monopolize all the privileges of kinship.
"Then who more able to advise a niece? She will listen to you. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. You must remember that she already admires you as a playwright. Insist that in future she must admire you from the stalls instead of from the pit—as now. At present she is pinched. Do not misunderstand me. I speak in metaphors. She is pinched by straitened circumstances just as the women of China are pinched by their shoes. She declines to wear a hobble-skirt; but decline or not, she hobbles through life. She cannot do otherwise, which is why we live here in Camera Square like two spoonfuls of tea in an old caddy!"
"But you know, personally," John protested while the old lady was fanning back her lost breath, "personally, and I am now speaking as an uncle, personally I must confess that independence charms me."
"Music hath charms," said Mrs. Hamilton. "Who will deny it? And independence with the indefinite article before it also hath charms; but independence with no article at all, independence, the abstract noun, though it may be a public virtue, is a private vice. Vesuvius lends variety to the Bay of Naples; but a tufted mole on a woman's cheek affects the observer with abhorrence, like a woolly caterpillar lurking in the heart of a rose. Let us distinguish between the state and the individual. Do, my dear Mr. Touchwood, let us always preserve a distinction between wild nature and human nature."
John was determined not to give way, and he once more firmly asserted his admiration for independence.
"All the world's a stage," said Mrs. Hamilton. "Yes, and all the men and women merely players; yet life, Mr. Touchwood, is not a play. I have realized that since my husband died. The widow of a sinologue has much to realize. At first I hoped that Doris would marry. But she has never wanted to marry. Men proposed in shoals. But as I always said to them, 'What is the use of proposing to my daughter? She will never marry.'"