Rose was up in arms at once.
“Why, papa, how can you say that! Especially when you see how he’s improved. It’s wonderful. He’s another man. You can tell in a minute he’s not been drinking, he takes such an interest in everything and is so full of work and plans.”
“Is he?” said her father dryly. “Maybe so, but that don’t prevent him from being a damned fool.”
“You’re unjust to Gene. Why do you think he’s a fool?”
“Just because he happens to be one. You might as well ask me why I think the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. That’s what it does, and when I say it does, I’m not criticizing or complaining, I’m only stating the plain facts.”
Rose made a murmur of protest and he went on.
“You’re queer cattle, you women. I suppose a feller could live in the world a hundred years and not understand you. There’s Delia Ryan, for example, the brainiest woman I know, could give most men cards and spades and beat ’em hands down. Last night at Rocky Bar they were telling me that she’s written to the operator there and told him she’ll get him a position here in the Atlantic and Pacific Cable Company, in which she’s a large stock-holder, that’ll double his salary and give him a chance he’d never have got in this world. She wants to pay off a mortgage on a ranch Perley has in the Sacramento Valley and she’s sent Mrs. Perley a check for five hundred dollars. She’s offered Willoughby a first-rate job on the Red Calumet group of mines near Sonora in which Con had a controlling interest, and she’s written to the doctor to come down and become one of the house physicians of the St. Filomena Hospital, which she practically runs. She’s ready to do all this because of what they did for Dominick, and yet she, his own mother, won’t give the boy a cent and keeps him on starvation wages, just because she wants to spite his wife.”
He looked at his daughter across the table with narrowed eyes. “What have you got to say for yourself after that, young woman?” he demanded.
Rose had evidently nothing to say. She raised her eyebrows and shook her head by way of reply. Her face, in the flood of lamplight, looked pale and tired. She was evidently distrait and depressed; a very different-looking Rose from the girl he had taken away with him four weeks earlier. He regarded her for an anxiously-contemplative moment and then said,
“What’s the matter? Seems to me you look sort’er peaked.”