"I don't know what I do think," replied Edith, dropping her eyes.
"You think that I am a wretch!" he exclaimed. "You think I am a drunkard! You think I abuse my wife!"
She neither answered nor looked up.
He paused a moment, then went on fiercely. "If there is anything I hate, it is to have people look at me that way, and say nothing. If you scold a man, it looks as if you thought there was something in him that could tell black from white; and if you are impudent, you put yourself a little in the wrong, and that helps him. He isn't so much ashamed of himself. But when you just look, and say nothing, you shut him out. It is as much as to tell him that words would be thrown away on him."
"But," Edith objected, much at a loss, "if I answered you back, or said what I thought, there would be a quarrel right off."
"Did I fight when Dick gave me such a hauling-over before he went away?" the man questioned in a rough tone that did not hide how his voice broke, and his blood-shot eyes filled up with tears. "Didn't I hang my head, and take it like a dog? He said I had acted like a brute, but he didn't say I was one, and he didn't say but I could be a man yet, if I should try. Wasn't I sober for three months after he went away? Yes; and I would have kept sober right on if I had had some one to thorn and threaten me. But she gave up, and did nothing but whimper, and it maddened me. When I ordered her to mix my rum for me, she did it. I should have liked her better if she had thrown it, tumbler and all, into my face."
"You'd better not find fault with her," said Edith. "She's a great deal better than you are."
The child had a gentle, sincere way of saying audacious things sometimes that made one wonder if she knew how audacious they were.
The man stared at her a moment; then, looking away, answered without any appearance of anger, "I suppose she is; but I don't think much of that kind of goodness when there's a hard job to be done. You can't lift rocks with straws. I'm sorry for her; but, for all that, she aggravates me, poor thing!"