going to start any precedent."

"No, my boy, we're going to stay right here, and you're going to
stay here with us. There's lots of good times ahead for you and
Elizabeth, and in the meantime, I want you to be mighty sweet to
that mother of yours. She's the only mother you've got, boy. You
don't know what it means for us old folks to be disappointed in our
children. Now, don't disappoint me, lad. You be nice to that mother
of yours, and keep on loving Elizabeth, and it will all come right,
you see if it don't. If it don't come one way, it will come another;
you can take my word for it." As if Dad knew anything about it. He
thought then that every woman possessed a sweet mind and a loving
heart; he thinks so now. But one glimpse of Blakely's mother was
enough for me. She had a heart of stone; everything about her was
militant, uncompromising; her eyes were of a piercing, steely blue;
the gowns she wore were insolently elegant; she radiated a superb
self-satisfaction. When she looked at you through her lorgnette, you
felt as if you were on trial for your life. When she ceased looking,
you knew you were sentenced to mount the social scaffold. If it
hadn't been for Blakely and Dad, I should have died of rage during
the first two weeks of our stay in Santa Barbara.

It was a cruel position for me, and it didn't make it easier that
before we had been there three days the whole hotel was talking
about it. Of course, every woman in the hotel who had been snubbed
by Blakely's mother instantly took my part, and as there were only
two women who hadn't been snubbed by her--Mrs. Tudor Carstairs and
Mrs. Sanderson-Spear--I was simply overwhelmed with unsolicited
advice and undesirable attention. Indeed, it was all I could do to
steer a dignified course between that uncompromising Scylla,