''The knife is too large and too heavy, Uncle,'' I answer him fretfully once.
Then he has my knife taken away, and I must eat with my fingers. The dishes he prefers being all bloody meats, and hearts, and calves'' feet, my kid-skin gloves grow crimson—as if reverting to the substance they were made from. My appetite leaves me. I care most for the wine. I am served it in a crystal glass engraved with an M. The ring of silver that holds my napkin is marked a tarnished black with the same initial. They are to keep me mindful, not of my name, but of that of my mother; which was Marianne.
She is buried in the loneliest spot of all that lonely park—hers a solitary grey stone among so many white. I am taken to see it, and made to keep the tomb neat.
''Be grateful that you may,'' says Mrs Stiles, watching me trim the springing cemetery grass, her arms folded across her bosom. ''Who shall tend my grave? I shall be all but forgotten.''
Her husband is dead. Her son is a sailor. She has taken all her little daughter''s curling black hair to make ornaments with. She brushes my own hair as if the locks are thorns and might cut her; I wish they were. I think she is sorry not to whip me. She still bruises my arms with pinches. My obedience enrages her more than ever my passions did; and seeing that, I grow meeker, with a hard, artful meekness that, receiving the edge of her sorrow, keeps it sharp. That provokes her to the pinches—they are profitless enough— and to scolds, which pay more, as being revealing of her griefs. I take her often to the graves, and make certain to sigh, to the full strength of my lungs, over my mother''s stone. In time—so cunning