Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/210

 "I don't know," murmured Calvin, constrained and furious.

"It did," whispered his mother.

"Our Greek will never believe what we have in the attic until he starts to clear it out. I know we have boxes which have not been moved for a hundred years, Abigail," pursued cousin Harriet. "He'll surely clear out our bedsteads, too, and our ridiculous washstands and this table we're eating on."

"Cousin Harriet!" cried Calvin, feeling physically almost sick. He gazed at his mother, to whom this last had been addressed by cousin Harriet, and saw that, though she kept her face calm, she was ghastly pale; and cousin Harriet, herself, was pale at the horror to which her own words had driven her when she had set out to stir him and sting him from his singleness.

Having halted, she became unable to resume; and Calvin seized the opportunity to mention another matter, but his mind could not consider it and he elicited no reply from his mother or his cousin. It was minutes, indeed, before either of them was able to continue dinner with any show of appetite; and though they talked impersonally and cheerfully of other things, he was glad when dinner was over and he could go out and tramp through the woods, leaving his mother and cousin together.

He felt restless and offended. Cousin Harriet had upset his mother, he knew; but he knew, too, that cousin Harriet had not offended his mother; she had spoken at a time which his mother never would have chosen and in a manner which she never could have employed, yet she had said what his mother would say. He must marry. If not for himself, then for them, for their blood and heritage which were his, for their duties and traditions, for the sake of the home and all the people of the past