him to bed. She knew all the little knacks of doing it: she had learned long ago by caring for his father.
He didn't speak to her again, and buried his face in the pillow, biting into it with his strong, even teeth.
Belowstairs, Mrs. Wilbert Phipps was finishing her paper. "And so," she was saying in the flat voice she adopted for such occasions, "that was the visit that Mr. Phipps and I made to the Mammoth Cave. It was most interesting and not expensive. I advise you ladies all to make it at the earliest opportunity. We can never know enough of the geographical marvels of this, the greatest, freest and most noble nation under the protection of God."
Emma got down just in time. She congratulated Mrs. Phipps on the fascination of her paper, and regretted being able to hear only a little of it, but what she heard made her want to hear more: it was so fascinating. She did not say that the only part she heard was a sentence or two dealing with blind fishes.
It was Aunt Mabelle who "brought Naomi round." She had that quality of soft, insensitive people which, if allowed to expose itself long enough, becomes in the end irresistible. Aunt Mabelle was in her way a philosopher, possessing indeed even the physical laziness which gives birth to reflection. She was neither happy nor unhappy, but lived in a state of strange, cowlike contentment, which knew neither heights nor depressions. She was surprised at nothing, and through her long rocking-chair contemplation upon life and love, birth and death, she had shared the confidences of so many women that such behavior as Naomi's did not strike her as remarkable, but only to be listed in the vast category of human folly.
