“I knew nothing about it. This is the first word I have heard of it! What on earth could have tempted my mother to sell her home and move away from all her friends?”
“What could have tempted her?—what could have tempted her?” repeated Uncle Billy, mockingly, shutting his eyes, pinching his lips, and bobbing up his nose and chin, with petulance and contempt. “What could have tempted her to marry Doctor Wells, at her age?—a woman of forty, whose matrimonial feelings should all be quiet? What could have tempted her to do that?”
“I suppose my mother was lonesome.”
“Oh! lonesome be hanged! Wasn’t I there—her natural born brother—to keep her company? I don’t brag—but you know what company I am, nephew.”
“Yes,” said Mark, suppressing a smile.
“Well, I was there to take care of her, and protect her, and keep her company, and cowhide her niggers—although that last is very laborious exertion, and always put me in a profuse perspiration, and gives me a palpitation of the heart—the thoughtless creatures, to put me to the trouble of fatiguing myself so. And now, if you want to know what tempted your mother to sell her home and leave all her friends, I’ll just tell you—vanity.”
“Vanity!”
“Yes, vanity—the wish to be thought generous, and disinterested, and confiding,” sneered Uncle Billy.
Mark Sutherland reddened.
“My dearest mother was all that in reality, without wishing to be thought so!”