“Nonsense,” he replied.

“Your grandmother was a very handsome woman,” said Mrs. Witherspoon.  “She had jet-black hair, and her teeth were like pearls.  Ellen, what did Mr. Coglin say when you gave him the slippers?” Mr. Coglin was a clergyman.

“Oh, he thanked me, of course.  He couldn’t very well have said, ’Take them away.’”

“But did you tell him that you embroidered them with your own hands?”

“Yes, I told him.”

“Then what did he say?”

“He pretended to be greatly surprised, and said something, but I have forgotten what it was.  Mrs. Brooks is awful tiresome with her ’Yes, indeed,’ isn’t she?  Seems to me that I’d learn something else.”

“She’s hardly so tiresome with her ‘Yes, indeed,’ as her father is with his ‘Hah, hah, my dear Mr. Witherspoon,’” Henry replied.

“But he is a very old man, my son,” said Mrs. Witherspoon, “and you must excuse him.  I have heard that he was quite aristocratic before the war.”

“Oh, he never was aristocratic,” Ellen declared.  “Aristocracy hampered by extreme stinginess would cut but a poor figure, I should think.”

“Have we set up a grill here?” Henry asked.

Mrs. Witherspoon nodded at Ellen as if to emphasize the rebuke, and the young woman exclaimed:  “Oh, I’m singled out, am I?  Who said that the old man’s ‘hah, hah,’ was tiresome?  You’d better nod at your son, mother.”

But she gave her son never a nod.  In her sight he surely could commit no indiscretion.  A moment later the mother asked: 

“Have they talked to you again about going into the store?”

“Oh, they hint at it occasionally.”

“Ellen, can’t you find a chair?  I know your brother must he tired.”  Ellen got off the arm of Henry’s chair, and soon afterward Mrs. Witherspoon took the vacated place.  The young woman laughed, but said nothing.  The mother fondly touched Henry’s hair and smoothed it back from his forehead.  “Don’t you let them worry you, my son.  They can’t help but respect your manliness.  Indeed,” she added, growing strangely bold for one so gentle, “must a man be a merchant whether he will or not?  And whenever you want to write about poor women, you do it.  They are mistreated; they are made wretched, and by just such men as Brooks, too.  What does he care for a woman’s misery?  And your father’s so blind that he doesn’t see it.  But I see it.  And I oughtn’t to say it, but I will—­he has the impudence to tell your father that I give too much money to the poor.  It’s none of his business, I’m sure.”

There was a peculiar softness in Henry’s voice when he replied:  “I hope some time to catch him interfering with your affairs.”

“Oh, but you mustn’t say a word, my son—­not a word; and I don’t want your father to know that I have said anything.”

“He shall not know, but I hope some time to catch Brooks interfering with your affairs.  He has meddled with mine, but I can forgive that.”