“Yes, she gets spells when she’s moody—or at least just quiet,” Harlan admitted. “But she’s not always in them by any means. She’s rather amusing sometimes, and she seems to try to be kind to Dan.”
“Oh, she ‘seems to try?’” Mrs. Savage echoed. “_You_ seem to try to stand up for her! Do you like her?”
Faced with this abrupt question, Harlan was somewhat disturbed. “Well, possibly not,” he replied honestly, after a moment. “No, I can’t say I do.”
“I thought not. And does she like any of you?”
“Well, she’s evidently rather fond of mother—and of father, too.”
“Who on earth could help liking _them_?” Mrs. Savage cried, and, in her vehemence, seemed about to rise from her bed. “Do you think _that’s_ to her credit? She hates everybody and everything _else_ here, and she nags Dan. That means she thought he had money, and she married him for it, and now she’s disappointed. Well, she’ll keep on being disappointed a good while, so far as _my_ property is concerned! Then maybe she’ll have sense enough to leave him and give him a chance to get the woman he ought to’ve married in the first place.”
Harlan looked a little startled as his grandmother sank back, panting with exhaustion; the spirit within her was too high and still too passionate for the frail material left to it. The self of her was indeed without age, unaltered, and as dominant as it had ever been, though the instrument through which it communicated, her strengthless body, was almost perished out of any serviceableness. To her grandson there came an odd comparison: it seemed to him that she was like a vigorous person shouting through an almost useless telephone that could make only the tiniest, just perceptible sounds; and he had an odder thought than this: When the telephone was entirely broken and silent would she still be trying to shout through it? She would be shouting somewhere, he felt sure. But what he said, rather sadly, was, “Martha? I suppose you mean Martha Shelby?”
“Of course! Martha could make something out of Dan, and she’s never looked at anybody but him, and she never will. You needn’t expect her to, either, young man.”
Harlan’s colour heightened at this, and some shadows of sensitiveness about his mouth became quickly more visible. “Oh, no; of course I don’t,” he said quietly.