"Now, Ewing, I shall ask you to make no promises which you may not be strong enough to keep; but if you will promise me to make an earnest effort to let whisky and cards alone, and to make a man of yourself, refusing to be led by other people, I will talk with your father and get him to agree never to mention the past again, but to aid you with every encouragement in his power for the future."
"Why, Cousin Robert, pa never says anything to me. When ma scolds he just goes out of the house, and he don't come in again till he's obliged to. It a'n't pa at all, it's ma, and it a'n't any use to talk to her. I'll be of age pretty soon, and then I mean to take my share of grandpa's estate, and put it into money and go clear away from here."
Robert saw that it would be idle to remonstrate with the young man at present, and equally idle to interfere with the domestic governmental system practiced by Cousin Sarah Ann. He devoted himself, therefore, to the task of getting Ewing to bathe his head; and after a little time the two went down to dinner, Ewing thinking Robert the only real friend he could claim.
His head aching worse after dinner than before, he declined Robert's invitation to go to Shirley, and our friend rode back alone.
CHAPTER XIII.
Concerning the Rivulets of Blue Blood.
Mr. Robert was heartily glad to get away from the uncomfortable presence of Cousin Sarah Ann, and yet it can not be said that our young gentleman was buoyant of spirit as he rode from The Oaks to Shirley. Ewing's case had depressed him, and Cousin Sarah Ann had depressed him still further. His confidence in woman nature was shaken. His ideas on the subject of women had been for the most part evolved—wrought out, a priori, from his mother as a premise. He had known all the time that not every woman was his mother's equal, if indeed any woman was; he had observed that sometimes vanity and weakness and in one case, as we know, faithlessness entered into the composition of women, but he had never conceived of such a compound of "envy, hatred and malice, and all uncharitableness" as his cousin Sarah Ann certainly was; and as he applied the quotation mentally he was constrained also to utter the petition which accompanies it in the litany—"Good Lord deliver us!" This woman was a mystery to him. She not only shocked but she puzzled him. How anybody could consent to be just such a person as she was was wholly incomprehensible. Her departures from the right line of true womanhood were so entirely purposeless that he could trace them to no logical starting-point. He could conceive of no possible training or experience which ought to result in such a character as hers.