“A fine exhibition of filial duty!” Lena cried, in one of the irritated moods that returned upon her as the growing Henry Daniel began to be a little boy instead of a little baby. When he was a noisy little boy during the day his mother often became reminiscent, not happily, by the time his father came home in the evening. “You told me once she had a heart as big as she was,” Lena went on. “It looks like it, doesn’t it? Leaving that poor old man alone over there, month after month and year after year!”
Dan listened absently, his mind on a new customer for a lot. “Who you talkin’ about now?”
“Martha?” he said, his tone a weary one instantly. “How often have I told you she never was any girl of mine, big or little? What’s started you on _that_ again?”
“I shouldn’t think you’d expect it would take much to start me,” Lena exclaimed, “when you remember you gave me your sacred promise I should have a year in Europe——”
“Oh, Lordy! Have we got to go all over that again?”
“—And when you remember you deliberately broke your word to me,” Lena went on, “and haven’t ever even made the slightest effort to keep it! You hold me here, suffocating in this place, year after year——”
“Now, see here,” he interrupted; “just think a minute, please! Is that fair? Haven’t you been back to New York every year for at least two or three——”
But Lena almost shouted her interruption. “Yes! Two or three _weeks_! To visit my _fam_ily! Do you think it means happiness for me to be with _them_?—and all of ’em watching to see how I take care of my baby! Is that keeping your word to take me abroad? Oh,” she cried, with bitter laughter, “doesn’t it seem ironical even to you? That big creature next door was so jealous of me because I had what she wanted she couldn’t bear to stay where she had to look at it, so she goes away and gets what _I_ wanted! _Isn’t_ it ironical, Dan? Don’t you see it at all?”
“I see you’ve got your imagination all stirred up again, that’s all.”
“Imagination!” she cried. “Yes; I should think my imagination _would_ get ‘all stirred up!’ Why, it’s funny! She can go and take what I want, but it can’t be any good to her; she hasn’t culture enough to see it or to feel it or to hear it. I can see her carrying that accent around Europe, and asking waiters for ‘ice wat-urr’ and ‘please to pass the but-urr!’ Yet she can go and I can’t!”