Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/30

20 He was slow when it came to selecting words to express his opinions. The directors with whom he sat had a way of leaping so, leaving him way behind, mulling over and painfully trying to comprehend the significance of a vote that had just been passed, while they sprang nimbly ahead to fresh ones. No; better keep mum, David concluded, vote with the man whom fortune had so far favored, then close your eyes, hold your breath, and wait for the crash, which, if it should come, wouldn't be any of your doings anyway.

But at home David told himself that he played no such insignificant part. Up there in the gray house on the hill, he was a factor that had to be taken into consideration. In his own domain he bore all the marks of a tyrant. He was taciturn, churlish, stated his wishes gruffly, and wanted them obeyed without parley. David felt cross about all the time, when he was at home—"unhappy in his mind," Augusta expressed it. He said that a family consisting of an invalid wife, two interfering sisters-in-law, and a backboneless daughter, was enough to make a man feel unhappy in his mind. But the truth was that the most healing ointment that David could apply to his smarting pride, after spending the day monotonously making out time-cards, or sitting silent and submissive in the directors' room at the mills, where years ago his own father had been the ruling spirit, was to assume the rôle of despot somewhere at any cost. Besides, a man had to present something of an unyielding front in the same house where Augusta Morgan lived, or else be crushed and obliterated under her steam-roller methods.

Augusta Morgan was the kind of woman who made