“Oh yes, a good deal. There's always something to say on both sides, even when one's a wrong side. That's what makes it all so tiresome—makes you wish you were dead.” He looked up, and caught his boy's eye fixed with melancholy intensity upon him. “I hope you'll never look at both sides when you grow up, Win. It's mighty uncomfortable. You take the right side, and stick to that. Brother Gerrish,” he resumed, to the doctor, “goes round taking the credit of Brother Peck's call here; but the fact is he opposed it. He didn't like his being so indifferent about the salary. Brother Gerrish held that the labourer was worthy of his hire, and if he didn't inquire what his wages were going to be, it was a pretty good sign that he wasn't going to earn them.”
“Well, there was some logic in that,” said the doctor, smiling as before.
“Plenty. And now it worries Brother Gerrish to see Brother Peck going round in the same old suit of clothes he came here in, and dressing his child like a shabby little Irish girl. He says that he who provideth not for those of his own household is worse than a heathen. That's perfectly true. And he would like to know what Brother Peck does with his money, anyway. He would like to insinuate that he loses it at poker, I guess; at any rate, he can't find out whom he gives it to, and he certainly doesn't spend it on himself.”
“From your account of Mr. Peck.” said the doctor, “I should think Brother Gerrish might safely object to him as a certain kind of sentimentalist.”
“Well, yes, he might, looking at him from the outside. But when you come to talk with Brother Peck, you find yourself sort of frozen out with a most unexpected, hard-headed cold-bloodedness. Brother Peck is plain common-sense itself. He seems to be a man without an illusion, without an emotion.”
“Oh, not so bad as that!” laughed the doctor.
“Ask Miss Kilburn. She's talked with him, and she hates him.”
“No, I don't, Ralph,” Annie began.
“Oh, well, then, perhaps he only made you hate yourself,” said Putney. There was something charming in his mockery, like the teasing of a brother with a sister; and Annie did not find the atonement to which he brought her altogether painful. It seemed to her really that she was getting off pretty easily, and she laughed with hearty consent at last.
Winthrop asked solemnly, “How did he do that?”