The question in just this form had been up a number of times before, and had been handled in just this manner, or passed over entirely with a healthy Irish grin. Tonight, however, it was destined for a little more extended thought.
“You know it’s bad, papa,” corrected Aileen, firmly. “Now what’s the use getting mad about it? It’s old and cheap and dingy. The furniture is all worn out. That old piano in there ought to be given away. I won’t play on it any more. The Cowperwoods—”
“Old is it!” exclaimed Butler, his accent sharpening somewhat with his self-induced rage. He almost pronounced it “owled.” “Dingy, hi! Where do you get that? At your convent, I suppose. And where is it worn? Show me where it’s worn.”
He was coming to her reference to Cowperwood, but he hadn’t reached that when Mrs. Butler interfered. She was a stout, broad-faced woman, smiling-mouthed most of the time, with blurry, gray Irish eyes, and a touch of red in her hair, now modified by grayness. Her cheek, below the mouth, on the left side, was sharply accented by a large wen.
“Children! children!” (Mr. Butler, for all his commercial and political responsibility, was as much a child to her as any.) “Youse mustn’t quarrel now. Come now. Give your father the tomatoes.”
There was an Irish maid serving at table; but plates were passed from one to the other just the same. A heavily ornamented chandelier, holding sixteen imitation candles in white porcelain, hung low over the table and was brightly lighted, another offense to Aileen.
“Mama, how often have I told you not to say ‘youse’?” pleaded Norah, very much disheartened by her mother’s grammatical errors. “You know you said you wouldn’t.”
“And who’s to tell your mother what she should say?” called Butler, more incensed than ever at this sudden and unwarranted rebellion and assault. “Your mother talked before ever you was born, I’d have you know. If it weren’t for her workin’ and slavin’ you wouldn’t have any fine manners to be paradin’ before her. I’d have you know that. She’s a better woman nor any you’ll be runnin’ with this day, you little baggage, you!”
“Mama, do you hear what he’s calling me?” complained Norah, hugging close to her mother’s arm and pretending fear and dissatisfaction.
“Eddie! Eddie!” cautioned Mrs. Butler, pleading with her husband. “You know he don’t mean that, Norah, dear. Don’t you know he don’t?”
She was stroking her baby’s head. The reference to her grammar had not touched her at all.
Butler was sorry that he had called his youngest a baggage; but these children—God bless his soul—were a great annoyance. Why, in the name of all the saints, wasn’t this house good enough for them?
“Why don’t you people quit fussing at the table?” observed Callum, a likely youth, with black hair laid smoothly over his forehead in a long, distinguished layer reaching from his left to close to his right ear, and his upper lip carrying a short, crisp mustache. His nose was short and retrousse, and his ears were rather prominent; but he was bright and attractive. He and Owen both realized that the house was old and poorly arranged; but their father and mother liked it, and business sense and family peace dictated silence on this score.
“Well, I think it’s mean to have to live in this old place when people not one-fourth as good as we are are living in better ones. The Cowperwoods—why, even the Cowperwoods—”
“Yes, the Cowperwoods! What about the Cowperwoods?” demanded Butler, turning squarely to Aileen—she was sitting beside him—his big, red face glowing.
“Why, even they have a better house than we have, and he’s merely an agent of yours.”
“The Cowperwoods! The Cowperwoods! I’ll not have any talk about the Cowperwoods. I’m not takin’ my rules from the Cowperwoods. Suppose they have a fine house, what of it? My house is my house. I want to live here. I’ve lived here too long to be pickin’ up and movin’ away. If you don’t like it you know what else you can do. Move if you want to. I’ll not move.”
It was Butler’s habit when he became involved in these family quarrels, which were as shallow as puddles, to wave his hands rather antagonistically under his wife’s or his children’s noses.
“Oh, well, I will get out one of these days,” Aileen replied. “Thank heaven I won’t have to live here forever.”
There flashed across her mind the beautiful reception-room, library, parlor, and boudoirs of the Cowperwoods, which were now being arranged and about which Anna Cowperwood talked to her so much—their dainty, lovely triangular grand piano in gold and painted pink and blue. Why couldn’t they have things like that? Her father was unquestionably a dozen times as wealthy. But no, her father, whom she loved dearly, was of the old school. He was just what people charged him with being, a rough Irish contractor. He might be rich. She flared up at the injustice of things—why couldn’t he have been rich and refined, too? Then they could have—but, oh, what was the use of complaining? They would never get anywhere with her father and mother in charge. She would just have to wait. Marriage was the answer—the right marriage. But whom was she to marry?
“You surely are not going to go on fighting about that now,” pleaded Mrs. Butler, as strong and patient as fate itself. She knew where Aileen’s trouble lay.
“But we might have a decent house,” insisted Aileen. “Or this one done over,” whispered Norah to her mother.
“Hush now! In good time,” replied Mrs. Butler to Norah. “Wait. We’ll fix it all up some day, sure. You run to your lessons now. You’ve had enough.”
Norah arose and left. Aileen subsided. Her father was simply stubborn and impossible. And yet he was sweet, too. She pouted in order to compel him to apologize.
“Come now,” he said, after they had left
