第71章 DEAR ANNIE(3)

"I saw you myself quit raking hay and sit down on the piazza.""Yes," assented Jane, nodding violently, "I saw you, too.""You have no sense of your responsibility, Ben-jamin, and your sister Annie abets you in evading it," said Silas Hempstead with dignity.

"Benny feels the heat," said Annie.

"Father is entirely right," said Eliza. "Benja-min has no sense of responsibility, and it is mainly owing to Annie.""But dear Annie does not realize it," said Jane.

Benny got up lumberingly and left the room. He loved his sister Annie, but he hated the mild simmer of feminine rancor to which even his father's pres-ence failed to add a masculine flavor. Benny was always leaving the room and allowing his sisters "to fight it out."Just after he left there was a tremendous peal of thunder and a blue flash, and they all prayed again, except Annie; who was occupied with her own perplexities of life, and not at all afraid. She won-dered, as she had wondered many times before, if she could possibly be in the wrong, if she were spoil-ing Benny, if she said and did things without know-ing that she did so, or the contrary. Then suddenly she tightened her mouth. She knew. This sweet-tempered, anxious-to-please Annie was entirely sane, she had unusual self-poise. She KNEW that she knew what she did and said, and what she did not do or say, and a strange comprehension of her family over-whelmed her. Her sisters were truthful; she would not admit anything else, even to herself; but they confused desires and impulses with accomplishment.

They had done so all their lives, some of them from intense egotism, some possibly from slight twists in their mental organisms. As for her father, he had simply rather a weak character, and was swayed by the majority. Annie, as she sat there among the praying group, made the same excuse for her sisters that they made for her. "They don't realize it,"she said to herself.

When the storm finally ceased she hurried up-stairs and opened the windows, letting in the rain-fresh air. Then she got supper, while her sisters resumed their needlework. A curious conviction seized her, as she was hurrying about the kitchen, that in all probability some, if not all, of her sisters considered that they were getting the supper. Pos-sibly Jane had reflected that she ought to get supper, then she had taken another stitch in her work and had not known fairly that her impulse of duty had not been carried out. Imogen, presumably, was sew-ing with the serene consciousness that, since she was herself, it followed as a matter of course that she was performing all the tasks of the house.

While Annie was making an omelet Benny came out into the kitchen and stood regarding her, hands in pockets, making, as usual, one set of muscles rest upon another. His face was full of the utmost good nature, but it also convicted him of too much sloth to obey its commands.

"Say, Annie, what on earth makes them all pick on you so?" he observed.

"Hush, Benny! They don't mean to. They don't know it.""But say, Annie, you must know that they tell whoppers. You DID sweep the kitchen.""Hush, Benny! Imogen really thinks she swept it.""Imogen always thinks she has done everything she ought to do, whether she has done it or not,"said Benny, with unusual astuteness. "Why don't you up and tell her she lies, Annie?""She doesn't really lie," said Annie.

"She does lie, even if she doesn't know it," said Benny; "and what is more, she ought to be made to know it. Say, Annie, it strikes me that you are doing the same by the girls that they accuse you of doing by me. Aren't you encouraging them in evil ways?"Annie started, and turned and stared at him.

Benny nodded. "I can't see any difference," he said. "There isn't a day but one of the girls thinks she has done something you have done, or hasn't done something you ought to have done, and they blame you all the time, when you don't deserve it, and you let them, and they don't know it, and Idon't think myself that they know they tell whop-pers; but they ought to know. Strikes me you are just spoiling the whole lot, father thrown in, Annie.

You are a dear, just as they say, but you are too much of a dear to be good for them."Annie stared.

"You are letting that omelet burn," said Benny.

"Say, Annie, I will go out and turn that hay in the morning. I know I don't amount to much, but I ain't a girl, anyhow, and I haven't got a cross-eyed soul. That's what ails a lot of girls. They mean all right, but their souls have been cross-eyed ever since they came into the world, and it's just such girls as you who ought to get them straightened out. You know what has happened to-day. Well, here's what happened yesterday. I don't tell tales, but you ought to know this, for I believe Tom Reed has his eye on you, in spite of Imogen's being such a beauty, and Susan's having manners like silk, and Eliza's giving everybody the impression that she is too good for this earth, and Jane's trying to make everybody think she is a sweet martyr, with-out a thought for mortal man, when that is only her way of trying to catch one. You know Tom Reed was here last evening?"Annie nodded. Her face turned scarlet, then pathetically pale. She bent over her omelet, care-fully lifting it around the edges.

"Well," Benny went on, "I know he came to see you, and Imogen went to the door and ushered him into the parlor, and I was out on the piazza, and she didn't know it, but I heard her tell him that she thought you had gone out. She hinted, too, that George Wells had taken you to the concert in the town hall. He did ask you, didn't he?""Yes."

"Well, Imogen spoke in this way." Benny lowered his voice and imitated Imogen to the life.