Page:A Good Woman (1927).pdf/113

 could go on pretending, pretending, pretending, that he was merely ill, and one day would go back to Megambo to the glory and justification of them all. No one of them really believed any longer in the pretense of Philip's illness. Tacitly they would pretend to believe it because it was a good weapon: they would not even admit their doubts to each other. But from the moment he sprang up from Uncle Elmer's table they knew that he was quite in his right mind, and knew exactly what he meant to do. He was in his right mind, but he was a strange, unmanageable Philip.

And now he had disgraced them in a new and shameful way by going to work, not in an office over columns of figures, or even into a polite business such as Uncle Elmer's pump works, but by plunging straight into the Flats, into the Mills to work with the Hunkies and Dagoes. It was a thing no American had ever done. It was almost as if he had committed theft or murder.

After they had sat thus for more than hour, always beneath the larky gaze of the "late" Mr. Downes, Uncle Elmer rose at last and making himself very thin and stiff as a poker, he said, "Well, Em, I've decided one thing. If Philip doesn't come to his senses within two weeks, I'm through with him forever. You can tell him that—tell him I give him just two weeks, not an hour more—and then I'm through with him. After that I never want to see him again, or hear his name spoken. And when he gets into trouble from his wicked ways, tell him not to come to me for help."

He expected a response of some sort from his sister, but there was only silence, while she sat grimly regarding the carpet. It seemed that he felt a sudden