please.”
Angelo was hurt, and the tears came into his eyes. There was gentle
reproach in his voice, but, not anger, when he replied:
“Luigi, I often consult your wishes, but you never consult mine. When I
am in command I treat you as a guest; I try to make you feel at home;
when you are in command you treat me as an intruder, you make me feel
unwelcome. It embarrasses me cruelly in company, for I can, see that
people notice it and comment on it.”
“Oh, damn the people,” responded the brother languidly, and with the air
of one who is tired of the subject.
A slight shudder shook the frame of Angelo, but he said nothing and the
conversation ceased. Each buttoned his own share of the nightshirt in
silence; then Luigi, with Paine’s Age of Reason in his hand, sat down in
one chair and put his feet in another and lit his pipe, while Angelo took
his Whole Duty of Man, and both began to read. Angelo presently began to
cough; his coughing increased and became mixed with gaspings for breath,
and he was finally obliged to make an appeal to his brother’s humanity:
“Luigi, if you would only smoke a little milder tobacco, I am sure I
could learn not to mind it in time, but this is so strong, and the pipe
is so rank that–”
“Angelo, I wouldn’t be such a baby! I have learned to smoke in a week,
and the trouble is already over with me; if you would try, you could
learn too, and then you would stop spoiling my comfort with your
everlasting complaints.”
“Ah, brother, that is a strong word–everlasting –and isn’t quite fair.
I only complain when I suffocate; you know I don’t complain when we are
in the open air.”
“Well, anyway, you could learn to smoke yourself.”
“But my principles, Luigi, you forget my principles. You would not have
me do a thing which I regard as a sin?”
“Oh, bosh!”
The conversation ceased again, for Angelo was sick and discouraged and
strangling; but after some time he closed his book and asked Luigi to
sing “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains” with him, but he would not, and
when he tried to sing by himself Luigi did his best to drown his
plaintive tenor with a rude and rollicking song delivered in a thundering
bass.
After the singing there was silence, and neither brother was happy.
Before blowing the light out Luigi swallowed half a tumbler of whisky,
and Angelo, whose sensitive organization could not endure intoxicants of
any kind, took a pill to keep it from giving him the headache.
CHAPTER II
MA COOPER GETS ALL MIXED UP
The family sat in the breakfast-room waiting for the twins to come down.
The widow was quiet, the daughter was alive with happy excitement. She
said:
“Ah, they’re a boon, ma, just a boon! don’t you think so?”
“Laws, I hope so, I don’t know.”
“Why, ma, yes you do. They’re so fine and handsome, and high-bred and
polite, so every way superior to our gawks here in this village; why,
they’ll make life different from what it was–so humdrum and commonplace,
you know–oh, you may be sure they’re full of accomplishments, and
knowledge of the world, and all that, that will be an immense advantage
to society here. Don’t you think so, ma?”
“Mercy on me, how should I know, and I’ve hardly set eyes on them yet.”
After a pause she added, “They made considerable noise after they went
up.”
“Noise? Why, ma, they were singing! And it was beautiful, too.”
“Oh, it was well enough, but too mixed-up, seemed to me.”
“Now, ma, honor bright, did you ever hear ‘Greenland’s Icy Mountains’
sung sweeter–now did you?”
“If it had been sung by itself, it would have been uncommon sweet, I
don’t deny it; but what they wanted to mix it up with ‘Old Bob Ridley’
for, I can’t make out. Why, they don’t go together, at all. They are
not of the same nature. ‘Bob Ridley’ is a common rackety slam-bang
secular song, one of the rippingest and rantingest and noisiest there is.