“James, Lila still grieves for her father.”
“Yes,” answered the Doctor sadly, “and Henry Fenn was in the office this morning begging me to give him something that would kill his thirst.”
The doctor brought his hands down emphatically on his chair arms. “Duty, Bedelia, is the realest obligation in the world. Here are Lila and Henry Fenn. What a miserable lot of tommy rot about soul-mating Tom and this Fenn woman conjured up to get away from their duty to child and husband. They have swapped a place with the angels for a right to wallow with the hogs; that’s what all their fine talking amounts to.” The Doctor’s shrill voice rose. “They don’t fool me. They don’t fool any one; they don’t even fool each other. I tell you, my dear,” he chirped as he rose from his chair, “I never saw one of those illicit love affairs in life or heard of it in literature that was not just plain, old fashion, downright, beastly selfishness. Duty is a greater thing in life than what the romance peddlers call love.”
268The Doctor stood looking at his wife questioningly–waiting for some approving response. She kept on sewing. “Oh you Satterthwaites with hearts of marble,” he cried as he patted the cast iron waves of her hair and went chuckling into the house.
Mrs. Nesbit was aroused from her reverie by the rattle of the Adams buggy. When it drew up to the curb Laura and Grant climbed out and came up the walk. Laura wore a simple summer dress that brought out all the exquisite coloring of her skin, and made her light hair shine in a kind of haloed glory. It had been months since the mother had seen in her daughter’s face such a smile as the daughter gave to the man beside her–red-faced, angular, hard muscled, in his dingy blue carpenter’s working clothes with his measuring rule and pencil sticking from his apron pocket, and with his crippled arm tipped by its steel tool-holder.
“Grant is going to take that box of Lila’s toys down to the kindergarten, mother,” she explained.
When they had disappeared up the stairs Mrs. Nesbit could hear them on the floor above and soon the heavy feet of the man carrying a burden were on the stairs and in another minute the young woman was saying:
“Leave them by the teacher’s desk, Grant,” and as he untied the horse, she called, “Now you will get that door in to-night without fail–won’t you? I’ll be down and we’ll put in the south partition in the morning.” As she turned from the door she greeted her mother with a smile and dropped wearily into a chair.
“Oh mother,” she cried, “it’s going to be so fine. Grant has the room nearly finished and he’s interesting the wives of the union men in South Harvey and George Brotherton is going to give us every month all the magazines and periodicals that are not returnable and George brought down a lot of Christmas numbers of illustrated papers, and we’re cutting the bright pictures out and pinning them on the wall and George himself worked with us all afternoon. George says he is going to make every one of his lodges contribute monthly to the kindergarten–he belongs to everything but the Ladies of the G. A. R.–” she smiled and 269her mother smiled with her,–“and Grant says the unions are going to pay half of the salary of the extra teacher. That makes it easier.”
“Well, Laura, don’t you think–”