"Had n't you better just quietly attend to your
work?"
"Work, madame?" cried Roderick. "My work 's over. I can't work--I have
n't worked all winter. If I were fit for anything, this sentimental
collapse would have been just the thing to cure me of my apathy and
break the spell of my idleness. But there 's a perfect vacuum here!" And
he tapped his forehead. "It 's bigger than ever; it grows bigger every
hour!"
"I 'm sure you have made a beautiful likeness of your poor little
mother," said Mrs. Hudson, coaxingly.
"I had done nothing before, and I have done nothing since! I quarreled
with an excellent man, the other day, from mere exasperation of my
nerves, and threw away five thousand dollars!"
"Threw away--five thousand dollars!" Roderick had been wandering among
formidable abstractions and allusions too dark to penetrate. But here
was a concrete fact, lucidly stated, and poor Mrs. Hudson, for a moment,
looked it in the face. She repeated her son's words a third time with a
gasping murmur, and then, suddenly, she burst into tears. Roderick
went to her, sat down beside her, put his arm round her, fixed his eyes
coldly on the floor, and waited for her to weep herself out.
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