e gigantic, of a quite appalling size, threatening to choke her,
to crush all the spring and youth out of her. If Tussie got well she
was going to break his heart; if Tussie died it would be her fault.
No one but herself was responsible for his illness, her own selfish,
hateful self. Yes, she was a poisonous weed; a baleful, fatal thing,
not fit for great undertakings, not fit for a noble life, too foolish
to depart successfully from the lines laid down for her by other
people; wickedly careless; shamefully shortsighted; spoiling, ruining,
everything she touched. Priscilla writhed. Nobody likes being forced
to recognize that they are poisonous weeds. Even to be a plain weed is
grievous to one's vanity, but to be a weed and poisonous as well is a
very desperate thing to be. She passed a dreadful night. It was the
worst she could remember.

And the evening too--how bad it had been; though contrary to her
expectations Fritzing showed no desire to fight Tussie. He was not so
unreasonable as she had supposed; and besides, he was too completely
beaten down by the ever-increasing weight and number of his
responsibilities to do anything in regard to that unfortunate youth
but be sorry for him. More than once that evening he looked at
Priscilla in silent wonder at the amount of trouble one young woman
could give. How necessary, he thought, and how wise was that plan at
which he used in his ignorance to rail, of setting an elderly female
like the Disthal to control the actions and dog the footsteps of the
Priscillas of this world. He hated the Disthal and all women like her,
women with mountainous bodies and minimal brains--bodies self-indulged
into shapelessness, brains neglected into disappearance; but the
nobler and simpler and the more generous the girl the more did she
need some such mixture of fleshliness and cunning constantly with her.
It seemed absurd, and it seemed all wrong; yet surely it was so. He
pondered over it long in dejected musings, the fighting tendency gone
out of him completely for the time, so dark was his spirit with the
shadows of the future.

They had borrowed the wages--it was a dreadful moment--for that day's
cook from Annalise. For their food they decided to run up a bill at
the store; but every day each fresh cook would have to be paid, and
every day her wages would have to be lent by Annalise. Annalise lent
superbly; with an air as of giving freely, with joy. All she required
was the Princess's s