“That's all right! I shan't be sorry myself if she goes on lying down for the rest of the day. I don't know what you think of her, father, but I do know what I think!”
Mr. Teesdale continued to pace the floor with bent body and badly troubled face, but he said nothing.
“She's what I told you she would be,” proceeded the son, “in the very beginning. I told you she'd be stuck up—and good Lord, isn't she? I said we didn't want that kind here, and no more we do. No, I'm dashed if we do! Don't you remember? It was the time you read us the old man's letter. I liked the letter and I might like the old man, but I'm dashed if I like his daughter! She doesn't take after her father, I'll be bound.”
“Not unless he is very much changed,” admitted David sadly. “Still, I think you are rather hard upon her, John William.”
“Hard upon her! Haven't I been watching her? Haven't I ears and eyes in my head, like everybody else? It's only one meal I've set down to beside her, so far, but one 'll do for me! With her nasty supercilious smile, and her no-thank-you this and no-thank-you that! I never did know anybody take such a delight in refusing things. Look at her about that hare!”
“Yes; and your mother had spent all morning at it. I'm very much afraid she's knocked herself up over it, for she's lying down, too. Your mother is not so strong as she was, John William. I'm very much afraid that matter of Missy has been preying on her nerves.”
“I'd rather have Missy than this here Miriam,” said John William, after a pause, and all at once his voice was full of weariness.
The same thought was in Mr. Teesdale's mind, but he did not give expression to it. Presently he said, still pacing the room with his long-legged, weak-kneed stride:
“I wonder what Mr. Oliver meant when he hinted that I should find Miriam so different from the girls of our day? Where are the tricks and habits that he alluded to? Poor Missy had plenty, but I can't see any in Miriam.”
“Can't you? Then I can. Ways of another kind altogether. Did the girls in your day turn up their noses at things before people's faces?”