“What did you say, father! Try to tell me again.”
And he did; she heard every word:
“Good-bye, little Mell! I ain’t gwine ter morteefy ye no mo’!”
CHAPTER VI.
A DEAL IN FUTURES.
“Why do you fret so much about it?” asked Rube, sitting beside his promised wife about a week after the old man was laid to rest. “You loved your father, of course, but—”
“There’s the point!” exclaimed Mell. “I did not love him—not as a child ought to love a parent. What did it matter that his looks were common and his speech rude? His thoughts were true, his motives good, his actions honest, and now I mourn the blindness which made me value him, not for what he was, but what he looked to be. In self-forgetfulness and sacrificing devotion to me he was sublime. He went in rags that I might dress above my station; he ate coarse food that I might be served with dainties; he worked as a slave that I might hold my hands in idleness; and how did I requite him? I was ashamed of him; I held him in contempt. Oh, oh! My, my!”
“Come, now,” remonstrated Rube, trying to stem the torrent of this lachrymatory deluge, and wondering what had become of all the comforting phrases in the English language, that he could not put his tongue upon one of them. “Do try to calm yourself, dearest. I know you are exaggerating 307 the true state of the case, as we are all prone to do in moments of self-upbraiding. I never saw you lacking in respect to him.”
“There’s a great many bad things in me you never saw,” blubbered Mell, breaking out afresh.
“Dear, dear!” said Rube, “I never saw such grief as this!”
“You—are—disgusted, I know?”