Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/99

 brush on the floor, but the force of habit was stronger than her new-born character and she went on with her task. When one had done the same thing at the same hour three hundred and sixty-five times a year for twenty years the effect became paralyzing. She tried to calculate how many times she had brushed that hateful grey head. Twenty times three hundred and sixty-five (sometimes three hundred and sixty-six) times one hundred and eighty strokes. But the problem was quite beyond her. She was very poor at figures.

A sense of power rose in her with the knowledge that she had refused flatly to become converted and that she had taken it quietly. One had one's right to a religion. Nobody could command you to change your faith, thought Miss Fosdick. People had been burned for refusing to change, by that very Church which Aunt Henrietta was considering. "I could never meet my mother in Heaven with her knowing I had taken up with Popery." It was the first time she had ever refused Aunt Henrietta anything.

Memories of ancient wrongs began to well up in her soul. Clarence Hazeltine she might have married but for Aunt Henrietta, who said she was too young to marry and carted her off to California. Clarence—she saw him again through mists of sentiment—thin, a little bald at thirty, round-shouldered and round-eyed. Timid he was. If he hadn't been he wouldn't have let her be carried off.

Again Mrs. Weatherby interrupted her. "Really, Gertrude, I don't know what has come over you. You know what a sensitive scalp I have." 