In the evening David brought
his friends to sit in talk with him on the wide verandas. At times he
went alone to his room at the top of the house and buried himself in
books. On Saturday evenings he had a debauch and with a group of
friends from town sat at a card table in the long parlour playing
poker and drinking highballs.
Laura Ormsby, Margaret's mother, had never seemed a real part of the
life about her. Even as a child the daughter had thought her
hopelessly romantic. Life had treated her too well and from every one
about her she expected qualities and reactions which in her own person
she would not have tried to achieve.
David had already begun to rise when he married her, the slender
brown-haired daughter of a village shoemaker, and even in those days
the little plough company with its ownership scattered among the
merchants and farmers of the vicinity had started under his hand to
make progress in the state. People already spoke of its master as a
coming man and of Laura as the wife of a coming man.
To Laura this was in some way unsatisfactory. Sitting at home and
doing nothing she had still a passionate wish to be known as a
character, an individual, a woman of action. On the street as she
walked beside her husband, she beamed upon people but when the same
people spoke, calling them a handsome couple, a flush rose to her
cheeks and a flash of indignation ran through her brain.
Pages:
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201