The Professor's House
couch sooner. Her image would have at once suggested the proper action.
Augusta, he reflected, had always been a corrective, a remedial influence. When she sewed for them, she breakfasted at the house—that was part of the arrangement. She came early, often directly from church, and had her breakfast with the Professor, before the rest of the family were up. Very often she gave him some wise observation or discreet comment to begin the day with. She wasn’t at all afraid to say things that were heavily, drearily true, and though he used to wince under them, he hurried off with the feeling that they were good for him, that he didn’t have to hear such sayings half often enough. Augusta was like the taste of bitter herbs; she was the bloomless side of life that he had always run away from,—yet when he had to face it, he found that it wasn’t altogether repugnant. Sometimes she used to telephone Mrs. St. Peter that she would be a day late, because there had been a death in the family where she was sewing just then, and she was “needed.” When she met him at the table the next morning, she would look just a little more grave than usual. While she ate a generous breakfast, she would reply to his polite questions about the illness or funeral with befitting solemnity, and then go readily to another topic, not holding the dolorous note. He used to say that he didn’t mind hearing Augusta announce these
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