As he speculated on the outcome, the two girls and Anson talked back and forth across the table, and he stopped thinking to listen.
It was the usual discussion of ways and means they carried on. This bill to be met—its fellow to be evaded until the end of the month. The evidences of a not over-lovely existence, but hard and precarious—close to the ragged edge of want. The much spent on the worthless shams—the little on the solid comforts of a good living.
“As if any one is deceived or thinks us richer than we are,” Philip thought. “We are more or less like our neighbors and they estimate our income to the last penny, just as we do theirs.” There was something so hopeless about the aspect life took on, something so perilously near to the perpetual grind of downright poverty, that it made him revolt and he burst out angrily: “Why, in heaven's name, don't you find some more cheerful subject to discuss! Must it forever be debts and bills, as if there was only the one purpose in living—to squirm through somehow until the end of the month!”
“I guess,” Katherine, the elder of the girls, said, her eyes snapping viciously, “that some one has to think of such matters, though I am sure no one wants to; and Anson is here so seldom and he is the——”
“Katherine!” Her mother spoke sharply, warning her not to finish the sentence.
Philip looked down at his plate and bit his lips. He knew what his sister would have said had their mother not interfered—that Anson was the family's mainstay—but her mother's warning stopped her.
It was by no means a loving family, nor was there any special graciousness in their intercourse. Philip barely tolerated his sisters. Katherine was undeniably mean and spiteful. To her natural tendencies she had added an exceedingly bigoted habit of thought which she referred to as “her faith”.
Its acquirement, if she was to be credited with telling the truth, had cost her many sleepless nights and great self-sacrifice. It was exercised chiefly in a rabid criticism of her species in which she recently delighted.
Florence was rather better in sweetness of temper and disposition, but to hear her talk was maddening torture to him. She had all a woman's misplaced and indiscriminate adjectives. Everything was “grand” to her, from hot pop-corn to a clap of thunder.
The connecting link holding the four together was Mrs. Southard, whose force of will kept them united after love and affection had ceased to exist.