I'm always in the right, and mother's always in the wrong. She's
admitted that for years. She's had to admit it. Yet she _would_ go her
own way. Nothing would ever cure mother."

"She used to talk just like that of your grandfather," said James.
"Susan always reckoned as she'd got more than her fair share of sense."

"I don't think she thinks that now," said Helen, calmly, as if to say:
"At any rate I've cured her of _that_." Then she went on: "You see, Mr.
Bratt had sold his farm--couldn't make it pay--and he was going out to
Manitoba. He said he would stop in England. Mother said she wouldn't let
him stop in England where he couldn't make a farm pay. She was quite
right there," Helen admitted, with careful justice. "But then she said
she wouldn't marry him and go out to Manitoba, because of leaving me
alone here to look after myself! Can you imagine such a reason?"

James merely raised his head quickly several times. The gesture meant
whatever Helen preferred that it should mean.

"The idea!" she continued. "As if I hadn't looked after mother and kept
her in order, and myself, too, for several years! No. She wouldn't marry
him and go out there! And she wouldn't marry him and stay here! She
actually began to talk all the usual conventional sort of stuff, you
know--about how she had no right to marry again, and she didn't believe
in second marriages, and about her duty to me. And so on. You know. I
reasoned with her--I explained to her that probably she had another
thirty years to live. I told her she was quite young. She _is_. And why
should she make herself permanently miserable, _and_ Mr. Bratt, _and_
me, merely out of a quite mistaken sense of duty? No use! I tried
everything I could. No use!"