If she had been strong and rugged her commonness would have had a
certain vigor; but to be nearly refined without being quite refined
is as harrowing as singing just a little off the key. To be far off
the key is to be in another key, but to smite at a note and muff it
is excruciation. Better far to drone middle C than to aim at high C
and miss it by a comma.
Yet Jim understood that he could not long prevent the encounter of
his wife and her relatives with his mother and her relatives. He
could not be so boorishly insolent as to forbid the meeting, and he
could not be so blind as to expect success. He got away at length on
the pretext of making arrangements with his mother, who was a very
busy woman, he said. Mrs. Thropp could not imagine why a rich woman
should be busy, but she held her whist.
Jim was glad to escape, even on so gruesome an errand, and now when
he kissed Kedzie good-by he had to kiss momma as well. He would
almost rather have kissed poppa.
He entered his home in the late afternoon with the reluctance
of boyhood days when he had slunk back after some misdemeanor.
He loathed his mission and himself and felt that he had earned
a trouncing and a disinheritance.
He found his mother and father in the library playing, or rather
fighting, a game of double Canfield. In the excitement of the finish
they were like frantic children, tied in knots of hurry, squealing
with emulation. The cards were coming out right, and the speedier
of the two to play the last would score two hundred and fifty to
the other's nothing.
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