It seemed, indeed, when she was in this temper, that she could not be pleased. She was annoyed and irritable if people agreed carefully with all her utterances; she was annoyed equally by their disagreement and by their silence. A remark about the weather, the most studiously uncontroversial opinion, aroused her annoyance.
Sometimes at night she would weep hysterically upon her pillow, and turn fiercely upon her mate.
“Leave me! Go away! Get out! I hate you!”
He would rise obediently and go downstairs, but before he reached the living-room she would call fearfully after him, asking him to return.
She lavished kisses and abuse on him by turns: the mothering tenderness, in which she was drowning for want of a child, she poured out on a dirty little mongrel dog which had trotted in from the streets one night, half-dead from starvation. He was a snarling little brute with a rough black-and-white pelt, and an ugly lift of teeth for every one but his master and mistress, but he had grown waddling-fat upon choice meats and livers; he slept warmly on a velvet cushion and rode out with them, snarling at passers-by. She smothered the little cur with slaps and kisses, devoured him with baby-talk, and hated any one who disliked his mongrel viciousness. But most of her time, her love, her blazing energy, she gave to the care of her father. Her feeling toward Eliza was more bitter than ever: it was one of constant chaffering irritability, mounting at times to hatred. She would rail against her mother for hours:
“I believe she’s gone crazy. Don’t you think so? Sometimes I think we ought to get guardians appointed and keep her under custody. Do you know that I buy almost every bite of food that goes into that house? Do you? If it weren’t for me, she’d let him die right under her eyes. Don’t you know she would? She’s got so stingy she won’t even buy food for herself. Why, good heavens!” she burst out in strong exasperation. “It’s not my place to do those things. He’s her husband, not mine! Do you think it’s right? Do you?” And she would almost weep with rage.
And she would burst out on Eliza, thus: “Mama, in God’s name! Are you going to let that poor old man in there die for lack
