-that is to say, people who
necessarily had their own way. Their domination was stained by none
of the excesses which had rendered the grandfather intolerable. Their
surface temper was in truth almost sluggishly pacific. Underneath,
however, ugly currents and sharp rocks were well known to have a
potential existence--and it was the mission of the Dabneys to see that
no wind of provocation unduly stirred these depths. Worse even than
these possibilities of violence, however, so far as every-day life was
concerned, was the strain of obstinacy which belonged to the Thorpe
temper. A sort of passive mulishness it was, impervious to argument,
immovable under the most sympathetic pressure, which particularly tried
the Dabney patience. It seemed to Julia now, as she interposed her
soothing influence between these jarring forces, that she had spent
whole years of her life in personal interventions of this sort.

"Oh yes they will," she repeated, and warned her brother into the
background with a gesture half-pleading half-peremptory. "We are your
children, and we're not bad or undutiful children at all, and I'm sure
that when you think it all over, mamma, you'll see that it would be
absurd to let anything come between you and us."

"How could I help letting it come?" demanded the mother, listlessly
argumentative. "You had outgrown me and my ways altogether. It was
nonsense to suppose that you would have been satisfied to come back and
live here again, over the shop. I couldn't think for the life of me what
I was going to do with you. But now your uncle has taken all that into
his own hands. He can give you the kind of home that goes with your
education and your ideas--and what more do you want? Why should you come
bothering me?"

"How unjust you are, mamma!" cried Julia, with a glaze of tears upon her
bright glance.

The widow took her elbow from the desk, and, slowly straightening
herself, looked down upon her daughter. Her long plain face, habitually
grave in expression, conveyed no hint of exceptional emotion, but the
fingers of the large, capable hands she clasped before her writhed
restlessly against one another, and there was a husky-threat of collapse
in her voice as she spoke:

"If you ever have children of your own," she said, "and you slave your
life out to bring them up so that they'll think themselves your
betters, and they act accordingly--then you'll understand. But you don't
understand now--and there's no goo