"Well, won't I? It seems to me, you have quite a keen eye for the main chance. At least, that's how I've made it out, judging from your behavior. At first, you were all for marrying him, when you thought you could do it on the sly, without sacrificing your interests with me. Then, on the impulse of the moment, for Norris's benefit, maybe, you played tragedy-queen and forswore your fortune for the sake of the man you love. All of which would have been very pretty and romantic—if you had stuck to it. But, when you had had time to calculate—presto! it's your lover you repudiate, to hang on to the money. Now you're fairly certain he's got all you'll need—doctors fleece one abominably, nowadays! Come and feel your pulse, and give you a soothing-syrup, and send in a bill for ten dollars, and that's no placebo, I tell you! Oh, there's no doubt you'll be rich, if you marry a doctor—— Where was I?"
"You were running down doctors, grandmother, and I don't see how you can, when you know what those you've had have done for you. I——"
"There, there! I don't need you to inform me, young miss. What I was saying is, nobody would doubt, for a minute, you'll take him now. I don't."
"Grandmother," the girl began, with the same kind of exaggerated punctilio Martha had observed in Mr. Ronald. "Grandmother, I want to be very respectful to you. I don't want to say one word that will excite you, or make you ill. But I think you take unfair advantage of me. You taunt me, and jeer at me because you know I can't hit back, without being an unutterable coward."
Madam Crewe made a clicking sound with her tongue.
"On the whole, I think I'd like it better if you did hit back, providing you hit back in the right way. No temper, you understand. No rage, no rumpus and that sort of vulgarity. But real dexterous thrusting and parrying. Now, for example, you missed an opportunity a few moments ago. When I said I'd have liked to have a grandchild I could be proud of, you might have retorted, 'I'm sorry I disappoint you, grandmother, but, perhaps, if you had been Dr. Ballard's grandmother, his distinction might not have been so great.' That would have been a silencer, because,—it would have been true. I'm afraid you're not very clever, my dear."
"If that sort of thing—slashing people with one's tongue, is clever, I'm glad I'm stupid."
"There! That's not so bad! Try again!" applauded the old woman.
Katherine turned away, with a gesture of discouragement.
"It never occurred to me before," Madam Crewe meditated, "but what you really need is a sense of humor. You're quite without humor. You've brains enough, but you have about as much dash and sparkle as one of your husband-that-is-to-be's mustard-plasters. Only the mustard-plaster has the advantage of you in sharpness."