Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/36

Rh not grow beautiful as it grew larger—rather, in obedience to the grim law of industrial prosperity, it would soon lose its one lingering grace and spread out in unmitigated ugliness, devouring green ﬁelds and shaded slopes like some insect-plague consuming the land. The conditions were familiar enough to Amherst; and their apparent inevitableness mocked the hopes he had based on Mrs. Westmore’s arrival.

“Where every stone is piled on another, through the whole stupid structure of selﬁshness and egotism, how can one be pulled out without making the whole thing topple? And whatever they’re blind to, they always see that,” he mused, reaching up for the strap of the car.

He walked a few yards beyond the manager’s house, and turned down a side street lined with scattered cottages. Approaching one of these by a gravelled path he pushed open the door, and entered a sitting-room where a green-shaded lamp shone pleasantly on bookshelves and a crowded writing-table.

A brisk little woman in black, laying down the evening paper as she rose, lifted her hands to his tall shoulders.

“Well, mother,” he said, stooping to her kiss.

“You’re late, John,” she smiled back at him, not reproachfully, but with affection.

She was a wonderfully compact and active creature, with face so young and hair so white that she looked as [ 24 ]