Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/288

 thin—which was far from true. Ollie replied, with her eyes in her newspaper, that he was probably going into a "decline." He pretended to pay no attention to them; but his mother interfered, as they had expected her to.

"You've no business, now, making fun of Wat about his health," she said. "You know he isn't strong. He's big—but he's soft."

"Soft!" the girls screamed. "Paw, maw says Wat's soft!"

It is incredible, but—at that day, to everybody in the household except his mother—Sir Watson Tyler was a joke. And it is incredible, but—in spite of all the honorable traditions of convention to the contrary—these were the family relations in the Tyler home.

Mr. Tyler turned an amused eye on his wife, and she appealed to him with her usual helpless indignation. "Well, I think you ought to speak to the girls, Tom. I don't think it's very nice of them to make fun of their mother."

"But, maw!" Millie laughed. "You say such funny things we can't help it."

'I don't. You twist everything I say. Wat isn't strong. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

She scolded them in a voice that was unconvincing, and they replied to her as if she were an incompetent governess for whom they had an affectionate disrespect.