"I know," she admitted softly, "they said that twenty years ago, didn't they?"
"Well, she's been on her back almost all the time during those twenty years. It's wonderful what she's borne—her angelic patience. And, of course her hopes all hang on me now. She's got nobody else."
"But I thought Miss Kesiah was so devoted to her."
"Oh, she is—she is, but Aunt Kesiah has never really understood her. Just to look at them, you can tell how different they are. That's how it is Blossom—I'm tied, you see—tied hand and foot."
"Yes, I see," she rejoined. "Your uncle was tied, too. I've heard that he used to say—tied with a silk string, he called it."
"You wouldn't have me murder my mother, would you?" he demanded irritably, kicking at the twisted root of a willow.
"Good-bye, Mr. Jonathan," she responded quietly, and started toward the house.
"Wait a minute,—oh, Blossom, come back!" he entreated—but without pausing she ran quickly up the crooked path under the netting of shadows.
"So that's the end," said Gay angrily. "By Jove, I'm well out of it," and went home to dinner. "I won't see her again," he thought as he entered the house, and the next instant, when he ascended the staircase, "I never saw such a mouth in my life. It looks as if it would melt if you kissed it—-"
The dinner, which was pompously served by Abednego and a younger butler, seemed to him tasteless and stale, and he complained querulously of a bit of cork he found in his wine glass. His mother, supported by cushions in her chair at the head of the table, to which he had brought her in his arms, lamented his lack of appetite, and inquired tenderly if he were suffering? For the first time in his life he discovered that he was extinguishing, with difficulty, a smouldering resentment against her. Kesiah's ugliness became a positive affront to him, and he felt as bitterly toward her as though she had purposely designed her appearance in order to annoy him. The wine she drank showed immediately in her face, and he determined to tell his mother privately that she must forbid her sister to drink anything but water. By the dim gilt framed mirror above the mantel he discovered that his own features were flushed, also, but a red face was not, he felt, a cause of compunction to one of his sex.