Mrs. Alden had come upon her husband pacing the front porch of their dwelling with angry strides.
“That girl!” he said between his shut teeth. “I wash my hands of her and her affairs, and Espy shall never marry her with my consent, mark that, Jane!” and he brought down his clenched fist with emphasis upon the open palm of the other hand.
His wife looked disturbed, but after a moment’s thought said cheerfully, “She’ll come round yet, Nathan, and you don’t mean that to stand if she does?”
“No, of course not; but she isn’t going to come round; she hasn’t the sense to understand and appreciate an argument, and has somehow got her head full of Quixotic notions. I suppose she thinks she’ll make a grand heroine of herself by giving up everything to Kemper’s relations, and that they’ll generously hand back a share of it, or maybe the whole; but she’ll find out when it’s too late that she’s made a wonderful mistake.”
Mrs. Alden had her own opinion regarding Floy’s sense, but was far too wise to contradict her husband.
“I haven’t lived with him forty years for nothing,” she sometimes said. “I’ve found out that the only way to manage him is to seem to give in to all his notions. So I never cross him, and I generally contrive in the end to have things pretty much as I want them.”
Seeing she made no reply to his remark, Mr. Alden went on to give her a detailed account of his interview with Floy, winding up with, “There, now, what do you think of that?”
“Poor young thing!” sighed his wife, “it’s really dreadful to think what she’s gone through in the last two weeks, and perhaps she couldn’t quite put her mind on what you were saying so as to take it all in. Give her a little time; she may come around yet to your way of thinking. I must go and see about dinner now.”
“Yes,” he answered absently. “Suppose you go over after dinner; coaxing will move a woman sometimes when argument won’t.”
“I’ll try,” she said as she hurried away. It was what she had intended, though she had not thought it best to say so.