Читать книгу The Sisters-In-Law - Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton - Страница 16

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"Why didn't mother keep father at home and make him behave himself?"

"Mother did everything a good woman could do."

"Maybe she was too good."

"You abominable child. A woman can't be too good."

"Perhaps not. But I fancy she can make a man think so. When he has different tastes."

"Women are as they are born. My mother would not have condescended to lower herself to the level of those creatures who fascinated my father."

"Well, I wouldn't, neither. I'd just light out and leave him. Why didn't mother get a divorce?"

"A divorce? Why, she has never received any one in her house who has been divorced. Neither have I except in one or two cases where very dear friends had been forced by circumstances into the divorce court. I didn't approve even then. People should wash their dirty linen at home."

"Time moves, as I remarked just now. Nothing would stop me; if, for instance, I had been persuaded into marrying a member of the A. A. and he was in the way of ruining my young life. You should be thankful if I did decide to marry Mr. Dwight—mind, I don't say I care the tip of my little finger for him. I barely know him. But if I did you would have to admit that I was following the best Ballinger instincts, for he doesn't drink, or dissipate in any way; and everybody says he works hard and is as steady as—I was going to say as a judge, but I've been told that all judges, in this town at least, are not as steady as you think. Anyhow, he is. His family is as old as ours, even if it did have reverses or something. And you can't deny that he is a gentleman, every inch of him."

"I do not deny that he has a very good appearance indeed. But—well, he was brought up in San Francisco and no one ever heard of his parents. He admitted to me at the table that his father was only a clerk in a broker's office. He is not one of us and that is the end of it."

"Why not make him one? Quite easy. And you ought to rejoice in what power you have left."

She rose and stretched and yawned in a most unladylike fashion.

"I'm going to make a cup of coffee for our sentinel, and have a little chat with him, chaperoned by the great bonfire. Don't think you can stop me, for you can't. Heavens, what a noise that dynamite does make! We shall have to shout. It will be more than proper. Good night, darling."