“Miss Dexter can wait,” said the lady levelly. “I want you to read this article about you, Peter.”
“But what,” he wanted genially to know, “is the big idea? The gentleman thinks and says, probably with much force and emphasis, that I’m no good? Well, that’s not a news item, Eugenia. You know it for a fact, and I’ve long suspected it, so why muss up our minds with it this bright morning?—this pearly dawn!” he added meaningly, pulling his watch from under his pillow. “I hate being harrowed so early.... I think my resistance is low at this hour. Don’t you think that may be it?”
“My son,” she insisted, “cannot you see that I am serious?”
He sighed. “Certainly I can see that you are serious, Eugenia. I have seen nothing else since I have been old enough to make an intelligent estimate of your character, and it has, I might mention in passing, darkened my young life.... However ... to return to the matter in hand, unless this sob stuff is violent enough to be funny, there are lots of things I’d rather read!”
“Peter, I have been very unhappy about this mill for years. I urged your father not to invest in it. I knew—I suspected, at least, from its location—that the labor conditions would be deplorable, and of late years I have been convinced of it. Nevertheless—and I blame myself severely for it——”
“Oh, now, don’t be severe with yourself, Eugenia,” he pleaded engagingly. “There’s always me to revile, you know!”
“I have been so engulfed in other affairs, in fighting for things in general, that the particular, in this instance, has escaped me. And now this article, which, in spite of its almost hysterical attack upon you, personally, has a very authentic ring, proves that the Altonia is one of the bad mills.”
“I could have told you it was one of the bad mills, Eugenia. Darn’ dump’s passed its dividends twice, I understand from Judson.”
His mother stared. She hadn’t supposed, really, that this fritterling knew what a dividend was, but she returned instantly to her text. “I didn’t mean bad in that sense, of course, as you know quite well. I mean that it flagrantly disregards the laws with reference to employing children under a certain age, and working children of any age at night. If you will read it, Peter——”
“Now I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Eugenia. You leave it right here—right here beside me on the bed, see?—so I can’t possibly lose it, and after I’ve had my shower and my coffee, and while Takasugi’s shaving me——”