Again Harlan protested on behalf of his sister-in-law. “Oh, I shouldn’t make too much of that, grandma. A little rouge now and then——”
“‘A little rouge!’” the old lady echoed satirically. “She was plastered with it! That doesn’t make any difference though, because a woman that uses it at all is a bad woman and wants the men to know it.”
“It’s so,” the old lady cried as fiercely as her enfeebled voice permitted. “It’s the truth, and you’ll live to see I’m right. I don’t want you to forget then that I told you so. You remember it, Harlan.”
“Yes, grandma,” he said placatively. “I will if——”
“I don’t want any ‘if’ about it. You remember what I’m telling you! She’s bad!” Mrs. Savage spoke so vehemently that she had to pause and let her quickened breathing become more regular;—then she went on: “Look how she’s treated me. If she’d had the right stuff in her, she’d have been grateful to me for giving her a lesson. If she’d been just a foolish girl who’d made a mistake and painted herself because she wanted to look healthier when she met her new husband’s friends, why, she might have got a little pettish with me for showing her it was a mistake the way I did, but long before now she’d have forgiven me and thanked me for doing it. Not she! That was the last time I set foot out of doors; and has she ever come to see me? She’s never been near me! What’s more, she’s done her best to keep Dan from ever coming here. When he _has_ come I know he hasn’t dared to tell her. Do you deny it?”
Harlan shook his head. “No, I’m afraid I can’t, grandma.”
“Do you know why she hates me so?” the old lady demanded. “It’s because she’s bad, and she knows I know it. People never forgive you for knowing they’re bad. And now she’s brought this baby into the world to inherit her badness, and you sit there and wonder I say the child’s bound to turn out wrong.”
“Grandma!” the young man exclaimed, laughing. “I only wonder you don’t take into account the fact that the baby is Dan’s, too. Dan may be a rather foolish sort of person—in fact, I think he is—but surely you’ve never thought him bad.”
The old lady looked at her grandson querulously. “Don’t be so superior, young man. That’s always been your trouble—you think you’re the only perfect person in the world.” And when he would have protested, defending himself, she checked him sharply and went on: “Never mind! I’m talking about other things now. The trouble with Dan is that he’s never seen anything as it really is and never will—not in all the days of his life! He was that way even when he was a boy. I remember once you hurt his feelings about some poor little brackets he was making with a little Jew boy. He thought the brackets were perfect, and he thought the little Jew boy was perfect, too. When you criticized them both he got into such a spasm of crying he had to go home to bed.”