He has certainly, the Peon says, made everything pay well; he has Cousin Chad’s own genius for money-making. But he does not believe in spending money, nor, of course, in giving it; nor in being bothered with “idle gossiping women who ought to be at home minding their husbands’ affairs.” (He is never conscious of a woman except as the appendage of some man.) So Grace controls neither her own money nor her own home. All her gracious hospitality, her wise open-handedness to those in need, is a thing of the past. It is difficult for Milly even to have ordinary visitors, except in the afternoons; and if it were not for the child’s other-worldly beauty, before which the judgments applied to most girls are abashed, one would almost call her dresses shabby. But it is not easy to think of her dress, the girl herself so charms one.
She has been telling me a little of her troubles, poor child; they have been hard to manage in her mother’s absence. Chief among them, as I infer, mainly from what she did not say, is the difficulty of being properly courteous to Robert Lincoln, without calling down Cousin Jason’s boorish wrath on the young man’s head, as well as her own.
“You see it isn’t as if he were one of us, Cousin Lil,” she said, her soft cheeks flushed, her eyes large with unshed tears: “he’s a Northerner, you know, a New Englander. He’s interested in the interurban lines they’re building and projecting here in Tennessee, and he really lives in the city—I mean his headquarters are there. And when he comes down here to see us, why, it isn’t real Southern hospitality not to ask him to a single meal. But I daren’t. And once Uncle Jason came right into the parlor and banged the fire-irons around and glared and kept looking at his watch. And it was only half-past nine, Cousin Lil. That was just after Caro went back; and he really hasn’t been here since. I do hate for Northern people to think——” a tear slid down one cheek; but the slight shrinking of her pretty hand showed me she could not bear to be petted just now; she did not want sympathy, but help. She swallowed hard and went on.
“And you know next morning at breakfast I spoke to him—not to criticise, you know, nor anger him, of course. I told him not to be afraid that I would forget his wishes; that I told every one it kept him awake to have anyone stirring after ten o’clock at night, and that Mother and I always closed the house then; and I said it was only half-past nine last night.”
“What did he say?”
“Why, he just stormed, like he always does, you know. He said he wanted to go to bed early. And he got up without eating his breakfast, and slammed the door and went out. I had to run clear to the barn after him and beg and beg, before he would come back.”
“What on earth did you want him back for?” I inquired.
“Why, to eat his breakfast. He hadn’t had his coffee, and he’d have had a headache without it.”
“Milly Wood!” I gasped.
“Mother always coaxes him back,” said Milly, with gentle finality; “at least, she always tries. Sometimes he won’t come, and then she takes it to him herself. You know he has terrible headaches sometimes.”