"Yes," said Hiram. "I see." A smile of stern irony roused his features from their repose into an expressiveness that made Mrs. Whitney exceedingly uncomfortable—but the more resolute.
"Charles is willing to be liberal both in immediate settlement and in binding himself in the matter of his will," she went on. "He often says, 'I don't want my children to be impatient for me to die. I want to make 'em feel they're getting, if anything, more because I'm alive.'"
A long pause, then Hiram said: "That's one way of looking at it."
"That's your way," said Matilda, as if the matter were settled. And she smiled her softest and sweetest. But Hiram saw only the glitter in her cold brown eyes, a glitter as hard as the sheen of her henna-stained hair.
"No," said he emphatically, "that's not my way. That's the broad and easy way that leads to destruction. Ellen and I," he went on, his excitement showing only in his lapses into dialect, "we hain't worked all our lives so that our children'll be shiftless idlers, settin' 'round, polishin' their fingernails, and thinkin' up foolishness and breedin' fools."
Matilda had always known that Hiram and Ellen were hopelessly vulgar; but she had thought they cherished a secret admiration for the "higher things" beyond their reach, and were resolved that their son should be a gentleman and their daughter a lady. She found in Hiram's energetic bitterness nothing to cause her to change her view. "He simply wants to hold on to his property to the last, and play the tyrant," she said to herself. "All people of property naturally feel that way." And she held steadily to her programme. "Well, Hiram," she proceeded tranquilly, "if those marriages are to take place, Charles and I will expect you to meet us halfway."
"If Ross and my Delia and Arthur and your Jane are fond of each other, let 'em marry as you and Charles, as Ellen and I married. I ain't buyin' your son, nor sellin' my daughter. That's my last word, Tillie."
On impulse, he pressed the electric button in the wall behind him. When the new upstairs girl came, he said: "Tell the children I want to see 'em."
Arthur and Adelaide presently came, flushed with the exercise of the tennis the girl had interrupted.
"Mrs. Whitney, here," said Hiram, "tells me her children won't marry without settlements, as it's called. And I've been tellin' her that my son and daughter ain't buyin' and sellin'."