“I can't sleep,” said the girl simply. She cuddled in a big armchair, her feet tucked under her.
He put a hand on her shoulder. “I can't, either,” he said, and laughed a little, as if incapable of understanding the reason. “I think late eating doesn't agree with me. It must have been the deviled crab.”
“Mr. Waterbury?” suggested Sue.
“Eh?” Then Colonel Desha frowned, coughed, and finally laughed. “Still a child, I see,” he added, with a deprecating shake of the head. “Will you ever grow up?”
“Yes—when you recognize that I have.” She pressed her cheek against the hand on her shoulder.
Sue practically managed the entire house, looking after the servants, expenses, and all, but the colonel always referred to her as “my little girl.” He was under the amiable delusion that time had left her at the ten-mile mark, never to return.
This was one of but many defects in his vision. He was oblivious of materialistic facts. He was innocent of the ways of finance. He had come of a prodigal race of spenders, not accumulators. Away back somewhere in the line there must have existed what New Englanders term a “good provider,” but that virtue had not descended from father to son. The original vast Desha estates decreased with every generation, seldom a descendant making even a spasmodic effort to replenish them. There was always a mortgage or sale in progress. Sometimes a lucrative as well as love-marriage temporarily increased the primal funds, but more often the opposite was the case.
The Deshas, like all true Southerners, believed that love was the only excuse for marriage; just as most Northerners believe that labor is the only excuse for living. And so the colonel, with no business incentive, acumen, or adaptability, and with the inherited handicap of a luxurious living standard, made a brave onslaught on his patrimony.
What the original estate was, or to what extent the colonel had encroached upon it, Sue never rightly knew. She had been brought up in the old faith that a Southerner is lord of the soil, but as she developed, the fact was forced home upon her that her father was not materialistic, and that ways and means were.
Twice yearly their Kentucky estate yielded an income. As soon as she understood affairs, Sue took a stand which could not be shaken, even if the easy-going mooning colonel had exerted himself to that extent. She insisted upon using one-half the yearly income for household expenses; the other the colonel could fritter away as he chose upon his racing-stable and his secondary hobby—an utterly absurd stamp collection.