young and inexperienced to insist on this or know how to get it, but the
thought of it all made streaks of decidedly black anger in that scheme
of interwoven feelings. And you know, I was also acutely sorry for
him--almost as sorry as I was for my aunt Susan. Even then I had quite
found him out. I knew him to be weaker than myself; his incurable,
irresponsible childishness was as clear to me then as it was on his
deathbed, his redeeming and excusing imaginative silliness. Through some
odd mental twist perhaps I was disposed to exonerate him even at
the cost of blaming my poor old mother who had left things in his
untrustworthy hands.

I should have forgiven him altogether, I believe, if he had been in any
manner apologetic to me; but he wasn't that. He kept reassuring me in
a way I found irritating. Mostly, however, his solicitude was for Aunt
Susan and himself.

"It's these Crises, George," he said, "try Character. Your aunt's come
out well, my boy."

He made meditative noises for a space.

"Had her cry of course,"--the thing had been only too painfully evident
to me in her eyes and swollen face--"who wouldn't? But now--buoyant
again!... She's a Corker.

"We'll be sorry to leave the little house of course. It's a bit like
Adam and Eve, you know. Lord! what a chap old Milton was!

"'The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.'