Eugene was in the room.Aunt Sophy looked at him and he looked at Aunt Sophy.In her eyes was a question.In his was the answer.They said nothing.The next day Eugene enlisted.In three days he was gone.Flora took to her bed.Next day Adele, a faint, unwonted color marking her cheeks, walked into her mother's bedroom and stood at the side of the recumbent figure.Her father, his hands clasped behind him, was pacing up and down, now and then kicking a cushion that had fallen to the floor.He was chewing a dead cigar, one side of his face twisted curiously over the cylinder in his mouth so that he had a sinister and crafty look.
"Charnsworth, won't you please stop ramping up and down like that! My nerves are killing me.I can't help it if the war has done something or other to your business.I'm sure no wife could have been more economical than I have.Nothing matters but Eugene, anyway.How could he do such a thing!I've given my whole life to my children----"H.Charnsworth kicked the cushion again so that it struck the wall at the opposite side of the room.Flora drew her breath in between her teeth as though a knife had entered her heart.
Adele still stood at the side of the bed, looking at her mother.Her hands were clasped behind her, too.In that moment, as she stood there, she resembled her mother and her father so startlingly and simultaneously that the two, had they been less absorbed in their own affairs, must have marked it.
The girl's head came up stiffly."Listen.I'm going to marry Daniel Oakley."Daniel Oakley was fifty, and a friend of her father's.For years he had been coming to the house and for years she had ridiculed him.She and Eugene had called him Sturdy Oak because he was always talking about his strength and endurance, his walks, his rugged health; pounding his chest meanwhile and planting his feet far apart.He and Baldwin had had business relations as well as friendly ones.