Library opposite the Common it had been to stare hopelessly at rows of
books whose authors and titles offered no clue to their contents. Her few
choices had not been happy, they had failed to interest and thrill...

Of the Bumpus family Lise alone found refuge, distraction, and excitement
in the vulgar modern world by which they were surrounded, and of whose
heedlessness and remorselessness they were the victims. Lise went out
into it, became a part of it, returning only to sleep and eat,--a
tendency Hannah found unaccountable, and against which even her stoicism
was not wholly proof. Scarce an evening went by without an expression of
uneasiness from Hannah.

"She didn't happen to mention where she was going, did she, Janet?"
Hannah would query, when she had finished her work and put on her
spectacles to read the Banner.

"To the movies, I suppose," Janet would reply. Although well aware that
her sister indulged in other distractions, she thought it useless to add
to Hannah's disquietude. And if she had little patience with Lise, she
had less with the helpless attitude of her parents.

"Well," Hannah would add, "I never can get used to her going out nights
the way she does, and with young men and women I don't know anything
about. I wasn't brought up that way. But as long as she's got to work for
a living I guess there's no help for it."

And she would glance at Edward. It was obviously due to his inability
adequately to cope with modern conditions that his daughters were forced
to toil, but this was the nearest she ever came to reproaching him. If he
heard, he acquiesced humbly, and in silence: more often than not he was
oblivious, buried in the mazes of the Bumpus family history, his papers
spread out on the red cloth of the dining-room table, under the lamp.
Sometimes in his simplicity and with the enthusiasm that demands
listeners he would read aloud to them a letter, recently received from a
distant kinsman, an Alpheus Bumpus, let us say, who had migrated to
California in search of wealth and fame, and who had found neither. In
spite of age and misfortunes, the liberal attitude of these western
members of the family was always a matter of perplexity to Edward.

"He tells me they're going to give women the ballot,--doesn't appear to
be much concerned about his own womenfolks going to the polls."

"Why shouldn't they, if they want to?" Janet would exclaim, though she
had given little thought to the question.