From one point of
view I don't blame you for looking upon me as a futility. I presume
I am. Nor will I chide you for not taking the luck of life in a
sportsmanlike spirit. But I do insist----"
"At last!" she broke in. "At last I understand some pencil notes
that I found yesterday when I cleaned out your desk. A minute ago I
thought you were out of your head. Now I see that this--this
frightfulness of yours is premeditated. Premeditated, James Todd!
You prepared this speech in advance!"
Between you and me, she was right. I had heard him practise it in
the barn.
He took her arraignment calmly, "Hereafter," said he, "please
refrain from cleaning out my desk."
I heard her catch her breath. "You have never talked to me like this
before; never!" she said. "You have never dared. And that is
precisely the trouble with you, James Todd. You won't talk back; you
won't speak up for your rights. It is the cross of my life."
From the sound, I think she wept.
"You are the same in the outside world as you are at home. You let
the college trustees pay you what they please. You slave and slave
and wear yourself out for three thousand a year when we might have
twenty if you went into something else. And when your building-loan
stock matures and you do get a little money, you spend it for
this--this underbred little sewing-machine, and lure me out in it,
and lecture me, as if I--as if I were to blame.
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