the slave-traders from Missouri had made another raid upon the scattered
Abolitionist farmers. The woman had evidently been unfit for such rude
transplanting. She dwelt upon the fact that her husband had never
understood her feelings. If he had, she wouldn't have minded so much.
Marriage was not what girls thought; she had not been happy since she
left her father's house, and so forth. The lament was based on an
unworthy and futile egoism, but her whining timidity appeared to
Bancroft inexplicable. He did not see that just as a shrub pales and
dies away under the branches of a great tree, so a weak nature is apt to
be further enfeebled by association with a strong and self-contained
character. In those early days of loneliness and danger the Elder's
steadfastness and reticence had prevented him from affording to his wife
the sympathy which might have enabled her to overcome her fears. "He
never talked anythin' over with me," was the burden of her complaint.
Solitude had killed every power in her save vanity, and the form her
vanity took was peculiarly irritating to her husband, and in a lesser
degree to her daughter, for neither the Elder nor Loo would have founded
self-esteem on adventitious advantages of upbringing. Accordingly, Mrs.
Conklin was never more than an uncomfortable shadow in her own house,
and this evening her repeated attempts to bring about a semblance of
conversation only made the silence and preoccupation of the others
painfully evident.

As soon as the supper things were cleared away, Loo signalled to
Bancroft to accompany her to the stoop, where she asked him what had
happened.

"I insulted the Elder," he said, "and I told him I should leave his
house as soon as I could."