“There are very few who can say that.” Aggie tried to throw a ring of robust congratulation into her flat tones.
“Very few. But there’s no one like him.”
“No one like you, either, I should say.”
“Well, for him there isn’t. He’s never had eyes for any one but me—never.”
Aggie cast down her eyes demurely at that. She had no desire to hurt Susie by reminding her of the facts. But Susie, being sensitive on the subject, had provided for all that.
“Of course, dear, I know, just at first, he thought of you. A fancy. He told me all about it; and how you wouldn’t have him, he said. He said he didn’t think you thought him gentle enough. That shows how much you knew about him, my dear.”
“I should always have supposed,” said Aggie, coldly, “he would be gentle to any one he cared for.”
She knew, and Susie knew, she had supposed the very opposite; but she wished Susie to understand that John had been rejected with full realization of his virtues, because, good as he was, somebody else was still better. So that there might be no suspicion of regret.
“Gentle? Why, Aggie, if that was what you wanted, he’s as gentle as a woman. Gentler—there aren’t many women, I can tell you, who have the strength that goes with that.”
Aggie bent her head lower yet over her work. She thought she could see in Susie’s speech a vindictive and critical intention. All the time she had, Aggie thought, been choosing her words judicially, so that each unnecessary eulogy of John should strike at some weak spot in poor Arthur. She felt that Susie was not above paying off her John’s old scores by an oblique and cowardly blow at the man who had supplanted him. She wished that Susie would either leave off talking about John, or go.