"Yes, Helen," the Interpreter answered, at last, "I am sure your father's trouble all comes from the Mill."
For a while she did not speak, but sat looking wistfully toward the clump of trees that shaded her birthplace and the white cottage where Peter Martin lived with Charlie and Mary.
Then she said, musingly, "How happy we all were in the old house, when father worked in the Mill with you and Uncle Pete, and you used to come for Sunday dinner with us. Do you know, sometimes"—she hesitated as if making a confession of which she was a little ashamed—"sometimes—that is, since brother came home from France, I—I almost hate it. I think I feel just as mother does, only neither of us dares admit it—scarcely even to ourselves."
"You almost hate what, Helen?"
"Oh, everything—the way we live, the people we know, the stupid things I am expected to do. It all seems so useless—so futile—so—so—such a waste of time."
The Interpreter was studying her with kindly interest.
"I never felt this way before brother went away. And during the war everybody was so much excited and interested, helping in every way he or she could. But now—now that it is over and John is safely home again, I can't seem to get back into the old ways at all. Life seems to have flattened out into a dull, monotonous round of nothing that really matters."
The Interpreter spoke, thoughtfully, "Many people, I find, feel that way these days, Helen."
"As for brother," she continued, "he is so changed that I simply can't understand him at all. He is like a different man—just grinds away in that dirty old Mill day after day, as if he were nothing more than a common laborer who had to work or starve. In fact," she finished with an air of triumph, "that is exactly what he says he is—simply a laborer like—like Charlie Martin and the rest of them."
The Interpreter smiled.