"
"And I'm afraid I was not very unselfish myself in my stipulations,"
Verrian said, with another laugh. "I think that I wanted to stand well
with the postmaster."
There was a note of cynical ease in this which Mrs. Verrian found morally
some octaves lower than the pitch of her son's habitual seriousness in
what concerned himself, but she could not make it a censure to him. "And
you were able to reassure her, so that she needn't think of it any more?"
"What would you have wished me to do?" he returned, dryly. "Don't you
think she had suffered enough?"
"Oh, in this sort of thing it doesn't seem the question of suffering.
If there's wrong done the penalty doesn't right it."
The notion struck Verrian's artistic sense. "That's true. That would
make the 'donnee' of a strong story. Or a play. It's a drama of fate.
It's Greek. But I thought we lived under another dispensation."
"Will she try to get more of the kind of thing she was doing for Mrs.
Westangle at once? Or has she some people?"
"No; only friends, as I understand."
"Where is she from? Up country?"
"No, she's from the South."
"I don't like Southerners!"
"I know you don't, mother. But you must honor the way they work and get
on when they come North and begin doing for themselves.
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