"Might as well make use of it," he said. "Eating its head off Sunday afternoon."
But she remained quite firm. The car was not for her.
"Well, it's there for you if you want it." His air was majestic. "Better pay that money into the bank. And I shall tell your mother to expect you Sunday tea time."
It was left at that. He had gained both his points. The third was subsidiary; it didn't matter. All the same it was like Josiah to raise it as a cover for those that did.
Melia was frankly annoyed with herself for not having put up a better resistance. The sight of her father strutting down the street with the honors of war upon him was a little too much for her. He had been guilty of sixteen years of tyrannical cruelty and she was unable to forgive. In those sixteen years she had suffered bitterly and her stubborn nature had great powers of resentment.
Who was he that he should walk down Love Lane not merely as if he owned it--in sober truth he now owned half--but also the souls of the people who lived there? She could not help resenting that invincible flare, that overweening success, particularly when she compared it with the fecklessness of the man she had so imprudently married. After all, she was the first-born of this vain image and she knew his shortcomings better than he knew them himself. He had had more than his share of luck. No matter what the world might think of him, however fortune might treat him, he was not worthy of the position he had come to occupy.
As soon as the ponderous broadcloth back had turned the corner of Love Lane and was lost in that strong-moving stream, Mulcaster Road, she made up her mind that she would not go up to tea on Sunday afternoon. It was not that he really cared whether she went or not; had he done so he would have asked her sooner. Maybe his conscience was pricking him a bit, but he was not one to be much troubled in that way. In any case let it hurt him--so much the better if it did. This was a matter in which she would like him to be hurt as he had never been hurt before.
Here again, however, her father had an unfair advantage. If she stayed away on Sunday she might punish him a little--and even that was doubtful--but she would certainly punish her mother far more. And she had not the slightest wish to do that. She was sorry for her mother, whose sins of omission sprang from weakness of character. Nature had placed her in a very different category. She had fought this tyrant as hard as it was in her to fight any one, but she was one of nature's underlings whose lot was always to be trampled on.