It was a total with which she might have been still longer satisfied if it had not been for Richard and the contrast between his situation and her own. He knew all the details of his family history. One grandfather had perished in the Civil War, another had been the honored president of the college. One ancestor, indeed, had signed the Declaration of Independence. If only there were a single Bent or Ginter to place beside him, only a single Bent or Ginter about whom one could even speak!
Steadily bits of the past came into her quickened mind. There was the insulting familiarity of Bates, the sodden drunkard. But he would have known her mother when she lived at the tavern and he might not always have been as he was now.
"Am I growing mad?" said Eleanor in horror of herself.
She remembered also the scolding voice which had gone on and on, which connected itself with her cut head, and which had on another occasion wakened her at night. She heard her mother's voice, weeping, angry, and a single ungrammatical protest, "I ain't going to do it!"
"That I have imagined," said Eleanor.
The simple expedient of asking her mother occurred to her and was rejected. Old habit persisted; she had never forgotten her first rebuff. She still stood, in spite of her superior knowledge, her superior height, and various other superiorities, in awe of little Margie.
When the need of a confidant for some of her trouble became too pressing to be resisted, she went to Dr. Green, to whom she had gone in all childish complaints. His independent custom of following his own will with complete indifference to all else appeared suddenly a most desirable quality. She would tell him about Dr. Lister's shoelaces.
Dr. Green hailed her loudly and directed her to his inner office while he saw a patient in the outer room. The night was warm and the odor of chemicals more oppressive than usual. Eleanor looked about with the amused astonishment with which the chaos always filled her. How could a human being live in such a state when all might be put to rights in a day? In the corners on the floor was piled an accumulation of medical journals covering five years. Dr. Green's method of filing consisted apparently of a left-handed fling for the "Journal," a right-handed fling for the "Lancet," and a toss over the head for the "Medical Courier." In the fourth corner a spigot dripped water steadily into a rusty sink. In the upper corners were dusty spider webs, and over all the light of an unshaded lamp glared. Sitting in the midst in her beautiful clothes, Eleanor looked like a visiting princess.
When Dr. Green came back, he sat down in the swivel chair before his desk and looked at her carefully, as though seeking some sign of illness. There was for an instant a hungry look in his eyes; he regarded her a little as her mother regarded her, or as Mrs. Lister regarded Richard. It was a look which only Thomasina had ever detected; it had made her laugh when he talked about young men encumbering themselves with families.