“The Colonel is nutty, just plain nutty, I think,” suggested Josie without mincing matters in the least.
“Oh don’t say it! Please don’t say it!” cried Mary Louise. “He is as clear headed as can be and attends to his business just as he always has and he plays chess with Uncle Peter and can beat him as often as he gets beaten. A man who was not quite in his right mind couldn’t do that.”
“Well, honey, I should think you would rather your old grandfather was off his bean a bit than just plain mean and cantankerous. I fancy you think I put it pretty baldly,” noticing how her friend winced at her words, “but I see no other way to put it. Have you talked it over with Danny?”
“Oh, Josie, I just can’t talk it over with him because it would be so disloyal to poor Grandpa Jim! Think of all he has done for me! Think of what he sacrificed for my mother and how he was willing to go on and sacrifice himself forever for me if it had not been for the wisdom of your dear father.”
“Yes, honey, I am thinking of that. Don’t you know your grandfather loves you better than anybody in the world and he would die rather than hurt you, that is, if he is in his right mind? Don’t you realize that this poor old man who is deliberately wounding you every moment of the day—because he would ordinarily know that there can be no wound deeper than the one he is inflicting when he says hard things about your husband—don’t you know that this is not your real grandfather but a sick man, your grandfather with his brain not functioning properly? Just as my father refused to let your grandfather go on sacrificing himself uselessly for your poor mother, who had passed beyond his care and solicitude, so I am trying to make you see that you must not let your dear Danny be sacrificed just because you refuse to face the truth.”
“Josie, you are hard on me!”
“So I am, but not as hard on you as you are on yourself. Can’t you see, Mary Louise, you are being as unfair to Grandpa Jim as you are to Danny? Can’t you see that the real Colonel Hathaway would die before he would do what he is doing if he had his senses about him? He really should see a doctor. Why don’t you get that young Dr. Coles to look in on him?”
“It would make him furious. He likes Dr. Coles but, if he should come to see him professionally when he had not sent for him, he might be rude to him.”
“Well a little rudeness isn’t going to kill a nerve specialist. That’s what Coles is I believe. Get him to come in a kind of friendly way and see if he thinks your grandfather is normal.”
“You don’t think it would be underhanded?”