Brainard's great frame shook, but he made no other sign. This quiet she took as a favorable symptom. She would have done better in perceiving that he was between two contending forces so nearly equal as to hold him almost in equilibrium. The wretch had struck his daughter—a brutal, hateful thing as regarded his daughter or any daughter or any other woman; but his daughter had defied him, overridden him, and the man whom she had chosen for a master was now the instrument of her punishment. The accounts appeared to balance. However, figures do lie, and his own agitation indicated that the x of human emotion had not been completely eliminated from his problem.
"She laid her hand tremblingly upon the old man's arm."
He cleared his throat. "She has made her bed, Abbie," he said in a husky tone, "and now she must lie on it."
"No, father; you must hear what Burt says. He has had to go up there and—"
"Burt? Is that where he has been this morning? Has he turned against me too? Good God! what have I done to deserve such treatment as this? First it's Mark, with his drawing and his trying to play the fiddle; and then it's this pen-pusher that puts on those things Sundays and marches around singing songs; and now it's Burt, who's had every chance to make a good business-man of himself, and everything done for him. It's too bad; it's too almighty bad."
Abbie steadied herself against the corner of the table. Her breast heaved with fearfulness; she had never before openly protested to her father against himself.
"Why haven't you done anything for the others? Why didn't you give Mark an education?—the kind, I mean, that would have helped him, and the only kind. Why haven't you taken this Mr.—Mayme's hus—this man and made the best of it, and found something for him to do?—he can work in an office. Oh, father," she moaned, with a softening note of deprecation, "you have made it pretty hard for all of us."
"Abbie," he gasped, "are you turning against me too? Abbie, I've always thought so much of you, and I've done well by you. But I want you to go away—I won't see her. I won't. She must go away, and you too."