The smile wavered and clung to his face. Of course he said none of this. What he said was, "It is a dirty business. And I want nothing to do with it . . . not even any stock. If it hadn't been for the Mills, Lily might have married me."
From the bed arose the scornful sound of a hoarse chuckle, "Oh no, she wouldn't. You don't know her! She wouldn't marry you because you were such a poor thing."
At this Willie began to tremble. His face became as white as the spotless coverlet, and he grasped the bed rail with such intensity that his thin knuckles showed blue against his skin. It was the old taunt of a mother toward a child whose gentleness and indecision were to her both incomprehensible and worthy only of contempt, a child who had never suited her gigantic ideas of power and wealth.
"And pray tell me what you do intend to do?" she asked with rich sarcasm.
A tremulous quality entered Willie's voice as he replied. "I want to have a farm where I can raise chickens and ducks and rabbits."
"Great God!" replied his mother in her deep voice. It was all she said. Moving her head with a terrible effort, she turned her face to the wall away from her son. But Willie, though he still trembled a little in the presence of the old woman and the glowering portrait above his head, had a look of triumph in his pale eyes. It said, "I have won! I have won! I have achieved a victory. I am free at last from the monster which I have always hated. . . . I am through with the Mills. I am through with Judge Weissman. . . . I can be bullied no more!"
Outside the wind howled and tore at the eaves and presently there came a suave knock at the door . . . the knock of the worldly, white haired butler. "Miss Abercrombie is here to see Mrs. Harrison," came a suave voice, and before Willie could answer, his mother's crony, her nose very red from the cold, had pushed her way like a wriggling ferret into the room.
At the sight of Willie, she halted for a moment winking at him in a purely involuntary fashion.
"Your mother is so much better," she said bridling. "Aren't you delighted?"
