"They don't like themselves very much, Fred."
"I suppose they don't," she said, absently. "Well, nursing really wasn't my bat, so I have nothing against Mother on that lay. But you see, I've tried all the conventional things, and I've made up my mind to cut 'em out. Business is the thing for me. Business!"
"But isn't there a question of duty?" he said.
"Do you mean to Mortimore? Poor wretch! That's what Mother harps on from morning to night. What duty have I to Mortimore? I'm not responsible for him. I didn't bring him here. Mother has a duty to him, I grant you. She owes him—good Lord! how much she owes him! Apologies, to begin with. What right had she and 'old Andy Payton' to bring him into the world? I should think they would have been ashamed of themselves. Father was old and dissipated; and there was an uncle of his, you know, like Mortimore. His 'intellect was there,' too, but it was very decidedly 'veiled'! I suppose Mother worked the 'veiled intellect' off on you?"
They had reached the Payton house by this time, and Frederica, her hand on the gate, paused in the rainy dusk and looked into Arthur Weston's face, with angry, unabashed eyes. "Don't talk to me about a duty to Mortimore!"
"I meant a duty to your mother. Think of what you owe your mother."
"What do I owe her? Life! Did I ask for life? Was I consulted? Before I am grateful for life, you've got to prove that I've liked living. So far, I haven't. Who would, with Mortimore in the house? When I was a child I couldn't have girls come and see me for fear he would come shuffling about." He saw her shoulders twitch with the horror of that shuffling. "It makes me tired, this rot about a child's gratitude and duty to a parent! It's the other way round, as I look at it; the parent owes the child a lot more than the child owes the parent. Did 'old Andy' and Mama bring me into this world for my pleasure? You know they didn't. 'Duty to parents'—that talk won't go down," she said, harshly, and snapped the gate shut between them.
He looked at her helplessly. She was wrong, but much of what she had said was right,—or, rather, accurate. But when, in all the history of parenthood, had there been a time when children accused their fathers and mothers of selfishness, and cited their own existence as a proof of that selfishness! "Your mother will be very lonely," he said.
She shook her head. "Mother doesn't need me in the least. A puzzle of a thousand pieces is a darned sight more interesting than I am."
"You are a puzzle in one piece," he said.