"If you touch me, Edith--I'll--I'll bite you----"
"Hush, darling--you mustn't speak like that----"
"Oh, don't mind me, Christine. I'm not accustomed to respect in this
house. I don't expect it. 'Edith,' indeed! Did you ever hear such a
thing! I can't think what Jim was thinking about to allow it. He
ought to call me 'Mother'----"
Robert tore himself free from Christine's soothing embrace. He had a
moment's blinding, heart-breaking vision of his real mother. She stood
close to him, looking at him with her grave eyes, demanding of him that
he should avenge this insult. And in a moment he would be sick again.
"I wouldn't--wouldn't call you mother--not if you killed me. I
wouldn't if you put me in the fire----"
"Robert, dear."
"You see, Christine--but of course you won't see. You're blind where
he's concerned. What a wicked temper. Deceitful, too. I'm sure I'm
glad he's not my child. He's going to be like his father."
"I want to be like my father. I wouldn't be like you for anything."
"Robert, be quiet at once or I shall punish you."
She was angry now. She had been greatly tried during the last
twenty-four hours, and to her he was just an alien, hateful little boy
who made her feel like an interloper in her own house, bought with her
own money. She seized him by the arm, shaking him viciously, and he
flew at her, biting and kicking with all his strength.
It was an ugly, wretched scene.
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