Mrs. Madison did not share her children’s sanguine adaptability; and, of the three, Cora was the greatest solace to the mother’s troubled heart, though Mrs. Madison never recognized this without a sense of injustice to Laura, for Laura now was housewife and housekeeper—­that is, she did all the work except the cooking, and on “wash-day” she did that.  But Cora’s help was to the very spirit itself, for she was sprightly in these hours of trial:  with indomitable gayety she cheered her mother, inspiring in her a firmer confidence, and, most stimulating of all, Cora steadfastly refused to consider her father’s condition as serious, or its outcome as doubtful.

Old Sloane exaggerated, she said; and she made fun of his gravity, his clothes and his walk, which she mimicked till she drew a reluctant and protesting laugh from even her mother.  Mrs. Madison was sure she “couldn’t get through” this experience save for Cora, who was indeed the light of the threatened house.

Strange perversities of this world:  Cora’s gayety was almost unbearable to her brother.  Not because he thought it either unfeeling or out of place under the circumstances (an aspect he failed to consider), but because years of warfare had so frequently made him connect cheerfulness on her part with some unworthily won triumph over himself that habit prevailed, and he could not be a witness of her high spirits without a strong sense of injury.  Additionally, he was subject to a deeply implanted suspicion of any appearance of unusual happiness in her as having source, if not in his own defeat, then in something vaguely “soft” and wholly distasteful.  She grated upon him; he chafed, and his sufferings reached the surface.  Finally, in a reckless moment, one evening at dinner, he broke out with a shout and hurled a newly devised couplet concerning luv-a-ly slush at his, sister’s head.  The nurse was present:  Cora left the table; and Hedrick later received a serious warning from Laura.  She suggested that it might become expedient to place him in Cora’s power.

“Cora knows perfectly well that something peculiar happened to you,” she advised him.  “And she knows that I know what it was; and she says it isn’t very sisterly of me not to tell her.  Now, Hedrick, there was no secret about it; you didn’t confide your—­your trouble to me, and it would be perfectly honourable of me to tell it.  I wont{sic} unless you make me, but if you can’t be polite and keep peace with Cora—­at least while papa is sick I think it may be necessary.  I believe,” she finished with imperfect gravity, “that it—­it would keep things quieter.”

The thoughts of a boy may be long, long thoughts, but he cannot persistently remember to fear a threatened catastrophe.  Youth is too quickly intimate with peril.  Hedrick had become familiar with his own, had grown so accustomed to it he was in danger of forgetting it altogether; therefore it was out of perspective.  The episode of Lolita had begun to appear as a thing of the distant and clouded past:  time is so long at thirteen.  Added to this, his late immaculate deportment had been, as Laura suggested, a severe strain; the machinery of his nature was out of adjustment and demanded a violent reaction before it could get to running again at average speed.  Also, it is evident that his destruction had been planned on high, for he was mad enough to answer flippantly: