But when the door closed upon the escaping aunt and the sympathizing cousin, poor Mrs. Payton's worry overflowed into such endless details that at last her hearer gave up trying to comfort her. When he, too, made his escape, he was profoundly fatigued. His plea that Frederica should be allowed to burn her fingers so that she might learn the meaning of fire had not produced the slightest effect. To everything he said Mrs. Payton had opposed her outraged taste, her wounded love, her fixed belief in the duty of youth to age. When he ventured to quote that
"... it was better youth
Should strive, through acts uncouth,
Towards making, than repose on aught found made,"
she said poetry was all very well, but that, perhaps, if the poet or poetess who wrote that had had a daughter, they would think differently. When she was reminded that she, too, had had different ideas from those of her parents, she said, emphatically, never!—except in things where they had grown a little old-fashioned.
"I don't believe, when I was a girl, I ever crossed Mama in anything more important than in little matters of dress or furnishings.... Oh, do look at my puzzle before you go!"
But Arthur Weston, almost dizzy with the endless words, had fled. Down-stairs, while he hunted for his hat and coat, he paused to draw a long breath and throw out his arms, as if he would stretch his cramped mind, as well as his muscles, stiffened by long relaxing among the cushions of the big arm-chair.
"Is there anything in this world duller than the pronunciamento of a dull woman!" he said to himself. On the street, for sheer relief of feeling the cool air against his face, instead of the warm stillness of Mrs. Payton's sitting-room, he did not hail the approaching car, but strolled aimlessly along the pavement, sticky with fog.
"I wonder if she talks in her sleep?" he said. "I don't believe she ever stops! How can Fred stand it?" He knew he couldn't stand it himself. "I'd sell pop-corn on the street corner, to get away from it—and from Andy's old stovepipe!" It occurred to him that the ideals set forth in Mrs. Payton's ceaseless conversation were of the same era as the hat. "But the hat would fit Fred best," he thought—"Hello!" he broke off, as, straining back on the leash of an exasperated Scotch terrier, a girl came swinging around the corner of the street and caromed into him so violently that he nearly lost his balance.