“Couldn’t I?” she replied. “I could beat you, all right.”
“Lillian!” pleaded her mother, with a warning sound in her voice.
Cowperwood smiled, and laid his hand affectionately on his son’s head. “You’ll be all right, Frank,” he volunteered, pinching his ear lightly. “Don’t worry—just make an effort.”
The boy did not respond as warmly as he hoped. Later in the evening Mrs. Cowperwood noticed that her husband squeezed his daughter’s slim little waist and pulled her curly hair gently. For the moment she was jealous of her daughter.
“Going to be the best kind of a girl while I’m away?” he said to her, privately.
“Yes, papa,” she replied, brightly.
“That’s right,” he returned, and leaned over and kissed her mouth tenderly. “Button Eyes,” he said.
Mrs. Cowperwood sighed after he had gone. “Everything for the children, nothing for me,” she thought, though the children had not got so vastly much either in the past.
Cowperwood’s attitude toward his mother in this final hour was about as tender and sympathetic as any he could maintain in this world. He understood quite clearly the ramifications of her interests, and how she was suffering for him and all the others concerned. He had not forgotten her sympathetic care of him in his youth; and if he could have done anything to have spared her this unhappy breakdown of her fortunes in her old age, he would have done so. There was no use crying over spilled milk. It was impossible at times for him not to feel intensely in moments of success or failure; but the proper thing to do was to bear up, not to show it, to talk little and go your way with an air not so much of resignation as of self-sufficiency, to whatever was awaiting you. That was his attitude on this morning, and that was what he expected from those around him—almost compelled, in fact, by his own attitude.
“Well, mother,” he said, genially, at the last moment—he would not let her nor his wife nor his sister come to court, maintaining that it would make not the least difference to him and would only harrow their own feelings uselessly—“I’m going now. Don’t worry. Keep up your spirits.”