"We've had enough of that now, Martha! You can stop that just now. You know I don't think you're the one to correct your father!"
"But if I don't, who will? You're no good at it. You're too good-natured with him, you old precious lamb. He knows you don't like his godding. Does he stop? I know he doesn't like mine. Do I stop? We've got to be logical."
Emily smiled witheringly.
"Your logic is always so unexpected. Do behave yourself. You might at least ask him to send up the car, instead of ordering him to. He doesn't keep it for your benefit, you know."
"Oh, I don't know about that. If he keeps it just for himself, he's a selfish pig. If he keeps it partly for ours, why should we hesitate to acknowledge it? You're always defending him."
"Defending him from whom? He doesn't need any defense that I know of. He hasn't got any enemies."
"Well, maybe I shouldn't have said defense. That's not the word, maybe. But you'll have to acknowledge that he needs a good deal of—ahem—explanation, mother. You see for yourself he stops swearing like a sailor when I take him in hand. Everybody says 'My God.' But when he uses it you'd think he was a drunken sailor. Mother, come along. There's all that decoration to do when we get back. You can't trust them to do anything unless somebody's there to boss them. Get your hat."
They went out of the door together, and down the front walk to where the car waited in thick shade. The famous barberry hedge that divides the Kenworthy front lawn from the street dozes faintly in June, waking really only in October. But the lindens whose branches almost met across the narrow street were in the murmurous climax of leaf and blossom that day. Emily climbed into the car. Martha jumped in, slipped into the driving seat, and banged the door after her. Now Emily, when necessity compelled her to manipulate Bob's car, approached it humbly and coaxed it into action, praying it would get around the next corner safely. But Martha just seized it, and slapped it into obedience, and imperiously commanded it hither and thither hastily. Emily never saw her take charge of it without a sort of impulse of awe. The car, like everything else expensive, seemed to become the girl. She moved her hands on the large steering wheel with that surprising composure which Emily had admired from her babyhood. She always drove bareheaded. The breeze scarcely disturbed her hair, which was cut and combed almost as it had been ten years ago, when Jim Kenworthy used to sit and stroke it thoughtfully. There was never a day when Martha was at home that Emily didn't notice how distinguished the absolute straightness and fineness of that black hair seemed among shingled and marcelled heads. Bob didn't like bobbed hair, but he didn't make such an absolute fool of himself on the subject as some men did. Emily herself liked to think that there had never been any "putting up" of hair for her daughter. There had never been a day when a box of hairpins definitely divided her maturity from her childhood. There had never been any letting down of skirts for Martha. Her frocks, still cut simply, hung from her shoulders to—well, why should a man go fussing on indefinitely about the length of his daughter's skirts, after they had been determined! Of course, if Martha had had fat legs, and shaky hips, like some girls whose names might be mentioned, Emily might not have admired the prevailing styles so sincerely. But Martha was built slenderly enough, gracefully enough, to justify them, Emily thought, looking at her sitting there like a little child, in that pink gingham frock, uncorseted, unrestrained, all delicately and subtly blooming with color.
And Emily, though she enjoyed her daughter in perfect whiffs of satisfaction, looked at her not without uneasiness. For she knew, when she sat looking at that child, that she was seeing bodily before her eyes nineteen years of her life; and not the quantity of it only, but the very quality, the very flavor of it. Everything she had done she had done for that child; all that she had left undone she had left undone for her. Even Jim, the brother of her husband, whom she had loved, she had given up, she had kept distant from, for this child's sake. Often since he had died, six years ago, she had regretted that renunciation. She had thought bitterly at times that if she had gone to him, divorced or not divorced, child or no child, he might—who knew?—be living still. But generally, when she thought of it all, when Martha was with her, she had been glad of her decision. Martha was surely reward enough for any sacrifice a woman could make.
Because Martha was happy. That was the whole point. If her mother had divorced her father, or deserted him, surely there must have been something like a shadow, a sort of dimness, over the child's consciousness. But now how gay she was, how perfectly gay and light-hearted. For Emily, who had been an unhappy lonely young girl, that was enough. She fervently now loved the months when the whole house rose up to the zest of youth, when the rugs were rolled up and the victrola going, when the refrigerator was raided nightly, when the clothes lines were always adorned with swimming suits, the bathroom overflowing with girls, the railings even of the veranda lined with lads, cigarettes gleaming in the darkness of the garden—why ask whether feminine or masculine cigarettes—when there was no sleep till the last lingering car departing had made the night strident. Bob grumbled incessantly about Martha's company. But must not an only child, most of all, have friends about? "You'd think the house was run for that girl," Bob complained. And Emily answered to herself, for she was a wise one: "If this house of mine is run eight months of the year for you, why shouldn't it be run four months of the year for her?" But she said only: "Too bad! It's just a shame."