“If I have nothing better to do,” he exclaimed, stepping away from Adelaide. His mother clasped her hands at this. And his father shook his head angrily, thinking thus to token his indifference.
“You may come when you like—or stay away!” he said.
“So this is how I am repaid! This is how I am repaid!” cried Sarah.
“Why, Mama—”
“Don’t talk to me! I’m beginning to see how right your father used to be. Come, Josiah.”
She was the more severe, because, that season, Quincy had been the more amenable. Only parents who are not fond are not bullies.
Meantime, Marsden, knowing long ere this that he had lost his short-lived disciple, whistled a tune.
For there had been many things prior to this brief and trenchant consummation. But this was the immediate way that Quincy came to live alone, that autumn, in a boarding house in Murray Hill.
It was a natural step to take with his family an hour from the City. And this, his family knew. He had even mentioned contemplating it, that summer. There had been no talk then. But it would have been unseemly to their particular etiquette not to have protested at the moment of action. Had Quincy succumbed to their formal outburst and remained, he would have won for it no praise or grateful comment. Nor, in the stand he made, did he incur a serious blame. The family was sure to forget the strained discomfort which, by tradition bound, it was required to inject on any move, any decision whatsoever. Quincy would not be harshly judged. Quincy would not be less welcome. He knew that this being disagreeable merely eased a family, that the throwing its weight to “Nay” and tarnishing a normal impulse with its inertia’d hue and cry went always, by its nature, before accepting.
That first evening, he had seen Clarice.