Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/196

 rage. Three times now her will and her unquestioned knowledge of what was best for her boys had been defied. To make matters worse, the two older boys had not come whining home and ac knowledging how mistaken they had been. They had prospered in their chosen lines. And now here was Edward running away from her and the church, and right on the top of that a letter from Mark to say that he was about to be married to the daughter of a neighboring farmer. It was bad enough to be marrying a farmer's daughter, though if George Washington had had a daughter she would have been one, but to make matters worse Mark had made no mention of the church to which his fiancée belonged. Obviously, therefore, she must be either a Roman Catholic or a creature who believed in nothing at all. The enclosed photograph showed her to be a little too plump but exquisitely pretty.

Mrs. Eaton proceeded to work herself into a series of devastating sick headaches, which caused more suffering to others than to herself, and her only comfort in the world was James. He saw his opportunity and toadied to her unmercifully and wormed his way deeper and deeper into her good graces and closer and closer to her pocketbook.

Meanwhile Edward was on the broad Atlantic,