After the departure of the others, Quincy’s visit had begun with the reading aloud of two columns in the paper and of five pages in a magazine. This effort tired the good Sarah who, in the Harriet days, with an equal illness would not have deemed it worthy of mention to her husband. When Sarah was tired, she grew nervous. And like so many nervous women, she balanced herself with talk. The effect that women force by dint of words is a stimulant for them as insidious as liquor. The volume of words is a mere subsidiary, like the number of glasses. The effect, in either instance, is the heart of the habit. In the drinker the effect is immediate; in the talker, it rebounds from the attention of the victims talked to. In this way, it will be seen that of the two vices, talking is the worse. Drinking may confine its ravages to the drinker. At most, it will aggrieve only his close relations. The talker, however, is a curse-carrier with no conscience and no limit. Unfortunately, Quincy’s mother had lapsed into this weakness. She had been repressed, silent, really noble for so long a term! She had the right to wreak vengeance on society. Moreover, she loved her son. This called for an intense reparation. She lectured him, that morning. For three hours, she trod on his soul, harassed his spirit and crucified his secret self for being secret--here lay the real reason of her irritation. And then, she said: “Dearie, would you like to have your dinner brought up, so you can eat with your mother and keep her company?” Of course, Quincy was delighted. So Quincy’s food was brought to him on the same mahogany platter with glass base. And meanwhile, the maternal service flowed. The misunderstanding boy writhed in the quandary of two necessities--loving this woman and being hurt by her. The hand of the gay God was still too strong on him; he did not know that these two elements--love and pain--must be rejoicingly accepted. Often, his mother spoke of how her children had made her suffer. “You can never know, my boy, what a mother goes through, for a child.” Such remarks also, were designed to instil love and veneration. But again, the gay God intervened. The idea of pain still horrified the boy. Its perversion into a boast still filled him with disgust. He would fain have had it that motherhood be joyous; that the best things be the happy things of life. His mother’s lugubrity in speaking of her works of love struck him as sacrilege. And to a gay God, it was. Quincy was simply not grown-up. But it seemed to Sarah that in matters of sympathy and feeling, he was strangely backward. “I should like to be able to talk to you like a man, my dear. You are no longer a child.”