University of Virginia Library

25. CHAPTER XXV.
IN CHICOPEE.

THEY were having a late dinner at Aunt Barbara's,
a four o'clock dinner of roast fowls with onions
and tomatoes, and the little round table was nicely
arranged with the silver and china and damask for two,
while in the grate the fire was blazing brightly, and on the
hearth the tabby cat was purring out her appreciation of
the comfort and good cheer. But Aunt Barbara's heart
was far too sorry and sad to care for her surroundings, or
think how pleasant and cozy that little dining-room looked
to one who did not know of the grim skeleton which had
walked in there that very day along with Mrs. Dr. Van
Buren, from Boston. That lady had come up on the morning
train, and in her rustling black silk with velvet trimmings,
and her lace barb hanging from her head, she sat

before the fire with a look of deep dejection and thoughtfulness
upon her face, as if she too recked little of the creature
comforts around her. Aunt Barbara had known nothing
of her coming, and was taken by surprise when the village
hack stopped at her door, and sister Sophie's sable furs
and beaver cloak alighted from it. That something was the
matter she suspected from her sister's face the moment
that lady removed her veil and gave the usual dignified kiss
of greeting. Things had gone wrong again with Frank and
Nettie, most likely, she thought, for she was not ignorant
of the misunderstandings and misery arising from that unfortunate
marriage, and she had about made up her mind
to tell her sister just where the fault lay. She would not
spare Frank any longer, but give him his just deserts. She
never dreamed that the trouble this time concerned Ethie,
her own darling, the child whom she had loved so well,
and pitied, and thought of so much since the time she left
her in her prairie home. She had not heard from her for
some time, but, in the last letter received, Ethie had written
in a very cheerful strain, and told how gay and pleasant it
was in Camden that winter. Surely nothing had befallen
her; and the good woman stood aghast when Mrs. Dr. Van
Buren abruptly asked if Ethelyn was there or had been
there lately, or heard from either. What did it portend?
Had any harm come upon Ethie? And a shadow broke
the placid surface of the sweet old face as Aunt Barbara
put these questions, first to herself, and then to Mrs. Van
Buren, who rapidly explained that Ethelyn had left her
husband, and gone, no one knew whither.

“I hoped she might be here, and came up to see,” Mrs.
Van Buren concluded; while Aunt Barbara steadied herself
against the great book-case in the corner, and wondered

if she were going out of her senses, or had she heard
aright, and was it her sister Van Buren sitting there before
her, and saying such dreadful things.

She could not tell if it were real until Tabby sprang,
with a purring, caressing sound, upon her shoulder, and
rubbed her soft sides against her cap. That made it real,
and brought the color back to her face, but brought, also, a
look of horror into the blue eyes, which sought Mrs. Van
Buren's with an eager, and yet terribly anxious glance.
Mrs. Dr. Van Buren understood the look. Its semblance
had been on her own face for an instant when she first
heard the news, and now she hastened to dispossess her
sister's mind of any such suspicion.

“No, Barbara; Frank did not go with her, or even see
her when in Camden. He is not quite so bad as that, I
hope.”

The mother nature was in the ascendant, and for a moment
resented the suspicion against her son, even though
that suspicion had been in her own mind when Frank
returned from Camden with the news of Ethie's flight.
That he had had something to do with it was her first fear
until convinced to the contrary; and now she blamed
Aunt Barbara for harboring the same thought. As soon
as possible she told all she had heard from Frank, and
then went on with her invectives against the Markhams
generally, and Richard in particular, and her endless surmises
as to where Ethelyn had gone, and what was the
final cause of her going.

For a time Aunt Barbara turned a deaf ear to what she
was saying, thinking only of Ethie, gone; Ethie, driven
to such strait, that she must either run away or die; Ethie,
the little brown-eyed, rosy-cheeked, wilful, imperious girl,

whom she had loved so much for the very wilful imperiousness
which always went hand in hand with such pretty
fits of penitence, and sorrow, and remorse for the misdeed,
that not to love her was impossible. Where was she now,
and why had she not come at once to the dear old home
where she would have been made so welcome until such
time as matters could be adjusted on a more amicable
basis? For Aunt Barbara, though inly taking Ethie's
side altogether, had no thought that the separation would
be final. She had chosen a life of celibacy because she
preferred it, and had found it a very smooth and pleasant
one, especially after Ethie came and brought the sunshine
of joyous childhood to her quiet home; but “those whom
God had joined together” were bound to continue so, she
firmly believed; and had Ethie come to her with her tale
of sorrow, she would have listened kindly to it, poured in
the balm of sympathy and love, and then, if possible,
restored her to her husband. Of all this she thought
during the few minutes Mrs. Dr. Van Buren talked, and
she sat passive in her chair, where she had dropped, with
her dumpy little hands lying so helplessly in her lap, and
her cap all awry, as Tabby had made it when purring and
rubbing against it.

“Then, you have not seen her, or heard a word?” Mrs.
Van Buren asked; and in a kind of uncertain way, as if she
wondered what they were talking about, Aunt Barbara replied—

“No, I have not seen her, and I don't know, I am sure,
what made the child go off without letting us know.”

“She was driven to it by the pack of heathens around
her,” Mrs. Dr. Van Buren retorted, feeling a good deal guilty
herself, for having been instrumental in bringing about this

unhappy match, and in proportion as she felt guilty, seizing
with avidity any other offered cause for Ethie's wretchedness.
“I've heard more about them than you told me,” she went
on to say. “There was Mrs. Ellis, whose cousin lives in
Olney,—she says the mother is the most peculiar and old-fashioned
woman imaginable; actually wears blue yarn
stockings, footed with black, makes her own candles, and
sleeps in the kitchen.”

With regard to the candles Aunt Barbara did not know;
the sleeping in the kitchen she denied, and the footed stocking
she admitted; saying, however, those she saw were
black, rather than blue. Black or blue, it was all the same
to Mrs. Dr. Van Buren, whose feet seldom came in contact
with anything heavier than silk or the softest of lamb's
wool; and, had there been wanting other evidence of
Mrs. Markham's vulgarity, the stocking question would
have settled the matter with her.

“Poor Ethie!” she sighed, as she drew her seat to the
fire, and asked what they ought to do.

Aunt Barbara did not know. She was too much bewildered
to think of anything just then, and after ordering
the four o'clock dinner, which, she knew, would suit her
sister's habits better than an earlier one, she, too, sat
quietly down by the fire, with her knitting lying idly in
her lap, and her eyes looking dreamily through the frosty
panes off upon the snowy hills where Ethelyn used to
play. Occasionally, in reply to some question of her sister's,
she would tell what she herself saw in that prairie-home,
and then look up amazed at the exasperating effect it
seemed to have upon Mrs. Van Buren. That lady was
terribly incensed against the whole Markham race, for
through them she had been touched on a tender point.

Ethie's desertion of her husband would not be wholly excused
by the world; there was odium attaching to such
a step, however great the provocation, and the disgrace
was what Mrs. Van Buren would feel most keenly. That
a Bigelow should do so was very humiliating; and, by
way of fortifying herself with reasons for the step, she slandered
and abused the Markhams until they would hardly
have recognized the remotest relationship between themselves
and the “terrible creatures” whom the great lady
from Boston dissected so mercilessly that afternoon in
Chicopee.

It was nearly four o'clock now, and the dinner was almost
ready. Aunt Barbara had dropped her knitting upon the
floor, where the ball was at once claimed as the lawful prey
of Tabby, who rolled, and kicked, and tangled the yarn in
a perfect abandon of feline delight. Mrs. Van Buren having
exhausted herself, if not her topic, sat rocking quietly,
and occasionally giving little sniffs of inquiry as to whether
the tomatoes were really burned or not. If they were,
there were still the silver-skinned onious left; and, as Mrs.
Van Buren was one who thought a great deal of what she
ate, she was anticipating her dinner with a keen relish,
and wishing Barbara and Betty would hurry, when a buggy
stopped before the door, and, with a start of disagreeable
surprise, she saw Richard Markham coming through the
gate, and up the walk to the front door. He was looking
very pale and worn, for to the effects of his recent illness
were added traces of his rapid, fatiguing journey, and he
almost staggered as he came into the room. It was not in
kind Aunt Barbara's nature to feel resentment toward him
then, and she went to him at once as she would have gone
to Ethie, and, taking his hand in hers, said, softly—

“My poor boy! We have heard of your trouble. Have
you found her yet? Do you know where she is?”

There was a look of anguish and disappointment in Richard's
eyes as he replied—

“I thought—I hoped I might find her here.”

“And that is the reason of your waiting so long before
coming?” Mrs. Dr. Van Buren put in, sharply.

It was three weeks now since Ethie's flight, and her husband
had shown himself in no hurry to seek her, she reasoned;
but Richard's reply, “I was away a week before I
knew it, and I have been very sick since then,” mollified
her somewhat, though she sat back in her chair very stiff
and very straight, eyeing him askance, and longing to
pounce upon him and tell him what she thought. First,
however, she must have her dinner. The tea would be
spoiled if they waited longer; and when Aunt Barbara began
to question Richard, she suggested that they wait till
after dinner, when they would all be fresher and stronger.
So dinner was brought in, and Richard, as he took his seat
at the nicely-laid table, where everything was served with
so much care, did think of the difference between Ethie's
early surroundings and those to which he had introduced
her when he took her to his mother's house. He was beginning
to think of these things now; Ethie's letter had
opened his eyes somewhat, and Mrs. Dr. Van Buren would
open them more before she let him go. She was greatly
refreshed with her dinner. The tomatoes had not been
burned; the fowls were roasted to a most delicate brown;
the currant jelly was of just the right consistency; the
pickled peaches were delicious, and the tea could not have
been better. On the whole, Mrs. Van Buren was satisfied,
and able to cope with a dozen men as crushed, and sore,

and despondent as Richard seemed. She had resumed her
seat by the fire, sitting where she could look the culprit directly
in the face; while good Aunt Barbara occupied the
middle position, and, with her fat, soft hands shaking terribly,
tried to pick up the stitches Tabby had pulled out.
Tabby, too, had had her chicken wing out in the wood-shed,
and, knowing nothing of Ethie's grievances, had mounted
into Richard's lap, where she lay, slowly blinking and occasionally
purring a little, as Richard now and then passed his
hand over her soft fur.

“Now tell us: Why did Ethelyn go away?—that is,
what reason did she give?”

It was Mrs. Dr. Van Buren who asked this question, her
voice betokening that nothing which Richard could offer
as an excuse would be received. They must have Ethie's
reason or none. Richard would far rather Mrs. Dr. Van
Buren had been in Boston, than there in Chicopee, staring
so coolly at him; but as her being there was something he
could not help, he accepted it as a part of the train of
calamities closing so fast about him, and answered,
respectfully—

“It was no one thing which made her go, but the culmination
of many. There was a mistake on my part. I
thought her guilty when she was not, and charged her with
it in a passion, saying things I would give much to recall.
This was one night, and she went the next, before her
temper had time to cool. You know she was a little hasty
herself at times.”

“Perhaps so, though her temper never troubled me any.
On the whole, I think her about as amiable and mild in disposition
as people generally are,” Mrs. Van Buren replied,
forgetting, or choosing to forget, the many occasions on

which even she had shrunk from the fire which blazed in
Ethie's eyes when that young lady was roused.

But Aunt Barbara had either more conscience or a better
memory, and in a manner half-apologetic for her interference,
she said: “Yes, Sophie, Richard is right. Ethie had
a temper,—at least she was very decided. Don't you remember
when she broke the cut-glass fruit-dish, because
she could not have any more pineapple?”

“Barbara!” Mrs. Dr. Van Buren exclaimed, her voice
indicating her surprise that her sister should so far forget
herself as to reveal any secrets of the family, and especially
any which could be brought to bear upon Ethelyn.

Aunt Barbara felt the implied rebuke, and while her
sweet old face crimsoned with mortification she said,
“Truth is truth, Sophie. Ethie is as dear to me as to you,
but she was high-tempered, and did break the big fruit
bowl, and then denied herself sweetmeats of all kinds, and
went without sugar in her coffee and butter on her bread
until she had saved enough to buy another in its place.
Ethie was generous and noble after it was all over, if she
was a little hot at times. That's what I was going to say
when you stopped me so sudden.”

Aunt Barbara looked a little aggrieved at being caught
up so quickly by her sister, who continued: “She was a
Bigelow, and everybody knows what kind of blood that is.
She was too sensitive, and had too nice a perception of
what was proper, to be thrown among—” heathen, she
was going to add, but something in Aunt Barbara's blue
`eyes kept her in check, and so she abruptly turned to
Richard and asked, “Did she leave no message, no reason
why she went?”

Richard could have boasted his Markham blood had he

chosen, and the white heats to which that was capable of
being roused; but he was too utterly broken to feel more
than a passing flash of resentment for anything which had
yet been said, and after a moment's thought, during which
he was considering the propriety of showing Mrs. Van
Buren what Ethie had written of Frank, he held the letter
to her, saying, “She left this. Read it if you like. It's a
part of my punishment, I suppose, that her friends should
know all.”

With a stately bow Mrs. Van Buren took the letter and
hastily read it through, her lip quivering a little and her
eyelids growing moist as Ethie described the dreariness of
that dreadful day when “Aunt Van Buren came up from
Boston and broke her heart.” And as she read how much
poor Ethie had loved Frank, the cold, proud woman would
have given all she had if the past could have been undone
and Ethie restored to her just as she was that summer
night years ago, when she came from the huckleberry hills
and stood beneath the maples. With a strange obtuseness
peculiar to some people who have seen their dearest plans
come to naught, she failed to ascribe the trouble to herself,
but charged it all to Richard. He was the one in fault;
and by the time the letter was finished the Bigelow blood
was at a boiling pitch, and for a polished lady, Mrs. Dr. Van
Buren, of Boston, raised her voice pretty high as she asked,
“Did you presume, sir, to think that my son,—mine,—a
married man,—would make an appointment with Ethie, a
married woman? You must have a strange misconception
of the manner in which he was brought up! But it is all
of a piece with the rest of your abominable treatment of
Ethelyn. I wonder the poor girl stayed with you as long
as she did. Think of it, Barbara! Accused her of going

to meet Frank by appointment, and then locked her up to
keep her at home, and she a Bigelow!”

This was the first inkling Aunt Barbara had had of what
was in the letter. She was, however, certain that Frank
was in some way involved in the matter, and anxious to
know the worst, she said, beseechingly—

“Tell me something, do. I can't read it, for my eyes
are dim-like to-night.”

They were full of unshed tears,—the kind old eyes, which
did not grow one whit sterner or colder as Mrs. Van
Buren explained, to some extent, what was in the letter;
reading a little, telling a little, and skipping a little, where
Frank was specially concerned, until Aunt Barbara had a
pretty correct idea of the whole. Matters had been worse
than she supposed,—Ethie more unhappy, and knowing
her as she did, she was not surprised that at the last she
ran away; but she did not say so,—she merely sat grieved
and helpless, while her sister took up the cudgels in Ethelyn's
defence, and, attacking Richard at every point, left
him no quarter at all. She did not pretend that Ethie
was faultless or perfect, she said, but surely, if mortal ever
had just provocation for leaving her husband, she had.

“Her marriage was a great mistake,” she said; “and I
must say, Mr. Markham, that you did very wrong to take
her where you did without a word of preparation. You
ought to have told her what she was to expect; then, if
she chose to go, very well. But neither she nor I had any
idea of the reality; and the change must have been terrible
to her. For my part, I can conceive of nothing worse
than to be obliged to live with people whom even sister
Barbara called `Hottentots,' when she came home from
Iowa.”

“Not Hottentots,” mildly interposed Aunt Barbara.
“Philistines was what I called them, Sophie; and in doing
so, I did not mean all of them, you know.”

“Well, Philistines, then, if that's a better word than
Hottentots, which I doubt,” Mrs. Van Buren retorted
sharply.

Aunt Barbara's evident wish to smooth matters irritated
her to say more than she might otherwise have done, and
she went on:

“I know you made exceptions, but if my memory serves
me right, your opinion of Ethie's mother-in-law was not
very complimentary to that lady. A man has no business
to take his wife to live with his mother when he knows
how different they are.”

“But I did not know,” Richard said; “that is, I had
never thought much of the things which tried Ethie.
Mother was always a good mother to me, and I did not
suppose she was so very different from other women.”

“You certainly must be very obtuse, then,” Mrs. Van
Buren replied; “for, if all accounts which I hear are true,
your mother is not the person to make a daughter-in-law
happy. Neither, it seems, did you do what you could to
please her. You annoyed her terribly with your manners.
You made but little effort to improve, thinking, no doubt,
that it was all nonsense and foolishness; that it was just as
well to wear your hat in church, and sit with your boots
on top of the stove, as any other way.”

“I never wore my hat in church!” Richard exclaimed,
with more warmth than he had before evinced.

“I don't suppose you did do that particular thing, but you
were guilty of other low-bred habits which grated just as
harshly as that. You thought because you were a judge

and an M. C., and had the reputation of possessing brains,
that it did not matter how you demeaned yourself; and
there you were mistaken. The manners of a gentleman
would sit ten times more gracefully upon you because you
had brains. No one likes a boor, and no man of your
ability has any business to be a clown. Even if you were
not taught it at home, you could learn from observation,
and it was your duty to do so. Instead of that, you took
it for granted you were right because no one had ever suggested
that you were wrong, while your mother had petted
you to death. I have not the honor of her acquaintance,
but I must say I consider her a very remarkable person,
even for a Western woman.”

“My mother was born East,” Richard suggested, and
Mrs. Van Buren continued—

“Certainly; but that does not help the matter. It
rather makes it worse, for of all disagreeable people, a
Western Yankee is, I think, the most disagreeable. Such
an one never improves, but adheres strictly to the customs
of their native place, no matter how many years have
passed since they lived there, or how great the march of
improvement may have been. In these days of railroads
and telegraphs there is no reason why your mother should
not be up to the times. Her neighbors are, it seems, and
I have met quite as cultivated people from beyond the
Rocky Mountains as I have ever seen in Boston.”

This was a great admission for Mrs. Van Buren, who
verily believed there was nothing worth her consideration
out of Boston, unless it were a few families in the immediate
vicinity of Fifth Avenue and Madison Square. She
was bent upon making Richard uncomfortable, and could
at the moment think of no better way of doing it than con

trasting his mother's “ways” with those of her neighbors.
Occasionally Aunt Barbara put her feeble oar into the surging
tide, hoping to check, even if she could not subdue the
angry waters; but she might as well have kept silent, save
that Richard understood and appreciated her efforts to
spare him as much as possible. Mrs. Van Buren was not
to be stopped, and at last, when she had pretty fully set before
Richard his own and his mother's delinquencies, she
turned fiercely on her sister, demanding if she had not said
“so and so” with regard to Ethie's home in the West.
Thus straitened, Aunt Barbara replied—

“Things did strike me a little odd at Ethie's, and I don't
well see how she could be very happy there. Mrs. Markham
is queer,—the queerest woman, if I must say it, that I
ever saw, though I guess there's a good many like her up
in Vermont, where she was raised, and if the truth was
known, right here in Chicopee, too; and I wouldn't wonder
if there were some queer ones in Boston. The place
don't make the difference; it's the way the folks act.”

This she said in defence of the West generally. There
were quite as nice people there as anywhere, and she believed
Mrs. Markham meant to be kind to Ethie; surely
Richard did, only he did not understand her. It was very
wrong to lock her up, and then it was wrong in Ethie to
marry him, feeling as she did. “It was all wrong every
way, but the heaviest punishment for the wrong had fallen
on poor Ethie, gone, nobody knew where.”

It was not in nature for Aunt Barbara to say so much
without crying, and her tears were dropping fast into her
motherly lap, where Tabby was now lying. Mrs. Van
Buren was greatly irritated that her sister did not render
her more assistance, and as a failure in that quarter called

for greater exertions on her own part, she returned again to
the charge, and wound up with sweeping denunciations
against the whole Markham family.

“The idea of taking a young girl there, and trying to
bend her to your ways of thinking,—to debar her from all
the refinements to which she had been accustomed, and
give her for associates an ignorant mother-in-law and a half-witted
brother.”

Richard had borne a great deal from Mrs. Van Buren,
and borne it patiently, too, as something which he deserved.
He had seen himself torn to atoms, until he would never
have recognized any one of the dissected members as parts
of the Honorable Judge he once thought himself to be.
He had heard his mother and her “ways” denounced as
utterly repugnant to any person of decency, while James
and John, under the head of “other vulgar appendages to
the husband,” had had a share in the general sifting down,
and through it all he had kept quiet, with only an occasional
demur or explanation; but when it came to Andy, the
great, honest, true-hearted Andy, he could bear it no longer,
and Bigelow blood succumbed to the fiery gleam in Richard's
eyes as he started to his feet, exclaiming—

“Mrs. Van Buren, you must stop, for were you a hundred
times a woman, I would not listen to one word of abuse
against my brother Andy. So long as it was myself and
mother, I did not mind; but every hair of Andy's head is
sacred to us, who know him, and I would take his part
against the world, were it only for the sake of Ethie, who
loved him so much, and whom he idolized. He would die
for Ethie this very night, if need be,—ay, die for you, too,
perhaps, if you were suffering, and his life could bring relief.
You don't know Andy, or you would know why we

hold him quite as dear as we do the memory of our darling
Daisy; and when you taunt me with my half-witted
brother, you hurt me as much as you would to tear my
dead sister from her grave, and expose her dear face to the
gaze of brutal men. No, Mrs. Van Buren, say what you
like of me, but never again sneer at my brother Andy.”

Richard paused, panting for breath, while Mrs. Van
Buren looked at him with entirely new sensations from
what she had before experienced. There was some delicacy
of feeling in his nature, after all,—something which
recoiled from her unwomanly attack upon his weak-minded
brother,—and she respected him at that moment, if she
had never done so before. Something like shame, too, she
felt for her cruel taunt, which had both roused and wounded
him, and she would gladly have recalled all she had said of
Andy, if she could, for she remembered now what Aunt Bar
bara had told her of his kindness, and the strong attachment
there was between the simple man and Ethie. Mrs. Van
Buren could be generous if she tried; and as this seemed
a time for the trial, she did attempt to apologize, saying
her zeal for Ethie had carried her too far; that she hoped
Richard would excuse what she had said of Andy,—she
had no intention of wounding him on that point.

And Richard accepted the apology, but his face did not
again assume the cowed, broken expression it had worn at
first. There was a compression about the mouth, a firm
shutting together of the teeth, and a dark look in the
bloodshot eyes, which warned Mrs. Van Buren not to repeat
much of what she had said. It would not now be
received as it was at first. Richard would do much to
bring Ethie back,—he would submit to any humiliation,
and bear anything for himself, but he would never again

listen quietly while his mother and family were abused.
Mrs. Van Buren felt this intuitively; and knowing that
what she had said had made an impression, and would
after a time be acted upon, perhaps, she changed her tactics,
and became quite as conciliatory as Aunt Barbara
herself, talking and consulting with Richard as to the best
course to be pursued with regard to finding Ethie, and succeeding,
in part, in removing from his face the expression
it had put on when Andy was the subject of her maledictions.

Richard had a great dread of meeting his uncle in his
present trouble, and he was not quite sure whether he should
go there or not. At least, he should not to-night; and
when the clock struck eleven, he arose to retire.

“The room at the head of the stairs. I had a fire made
for you in there,” Aunt Barbara said, as she handed him
the lamp.

Richard hesitated a moment, and then asked, “Does any
one occupy Ethie's old room? Seems to me I would rather
go there. It would bring her nearer to me.”

So to Ethie's old room he went, Aunt Barbara lamenting
that he would find it so cold and comfortless, but feeling an
increased kindliness toward him for this proof of love to her
darling.

“There's a great deal of good about that man, after all,”
she said to her sister, when, after he was gone to his room,
they sat together around their hearth and talked the matter
over afresh; and then, as she took off and carefully
smoothed her little round puffs of false hair, and adjusted
her night-cap in its place, she said, timidly, “You were
rather hard on him, Sophie, at times.”

It needed but this for Mrs. Van Buren to explode again

and charge her sister with saying too little rather than too
much. “One would think you blamed Ethie entirely, or
at least that you were indifferent to her happiness,” she
said, removing her lace barb, and unfastening the heavy
switch bound about her head. “I was surprised at you,
Barbara, I must say. After all your pretended affection
for Ethelyn, I did expect you would be willing to do as
much as to speak for her, at least.”

This was too much for poor Aunt Barbara, and without
any attempt at justification, except that her sister in her
attack upon Richard had left her nothing to say, she cried
quietly and sorrowfully, as she folded up her white apron
and made other necessary preparations for the night. That
she should be accused of not caring for Ethie, of not speaking
for her, wounded her in a tender point; and long after
Mrs. Van Buren had gone to the front chamber, where she
always slept, Aunt Barbara was on her knees by the rocking-chair,
praying earnestly for Ethie, and then still kneeling
there, with her face on the cushion, sobbing softly,
“God knows how much I love her. There's nothing of
personal comfort I would not sacrifice to bring her back;
but when a man was feeling as bad as he could, what was
the use of making him feel worse?”