human
You'll see the president ... you'll fix it?
gpt
I'll see, Aunt 'Melia,
human
Aunt Amelia's been telling me a lot of things I never knew, Eli. It seems that ... say, did you ever hear that Grandfather Gridley, the Governor, was such a bad lot?
gpt
Why, mother never said much about her father one way or the other, but I always sort of guessed he wasn't all he might have been from her never bringing us on to visit here until after he died. She used to look queer, too, when folks congratulated her on having such a famous man for father. All the big politicians of his day thought a lot of him. He _was_ as smart as chain-lightning!
human
He was a disreputable old scalawag! cried his other grandson.
gpt
Some of the things Aunt Amelia has been telling me make me never want to come back to this part of the country again. Do you know why Uncle Grid lived so poor and scrimped and yet left no money? He'd been taking care of a whole family grandfather had beside ours; and paying back some people grandfather did out of a lot of money on a timber deal fifty years ago; and making it up to a little village in the backwoods that grandfather persuaded to bond itself for a railroad that he knew wouldn't go near it.
human
That's why he never married,
gpt
No, that's what I said, but Aunt Amelia just went wild when I did. She said ... gee! he passed his hand over his eyes with a gesture of mental confusion.
human
Ain't it strange what can go on under your eyes and you never know it? Why, she says Uncle Grid was just like his father.
gpt
No! No! Not that! Heavens, no! I mean ... made like him ... _wanted_ to be that kind, 'specially drink ... His tongue, unused to phrasing abstractions, stumbled and tripped in his haste to correct the other's impression.
human
You know how much Uncle Grid used to look like grandfather ... the same black hair and broad face and thick red lips and a kind of knob on the end of his nose? Well, it seems he had his father's insides, too ... _but his mother's conscience!_ I guess, from what Aunt Amelia says, that the combination made life about as near Tophet for him ...! She's the only one to know anything about it, because she's lived with him always, you know, took him when grandmother died and he was a child. She says when he was younger he was like a man fighting a wild beast ... he didn't dare let up or rest. Some days he wouldn't stop working at his desk all day long, not even to eat, and then he'd grab up a piece of bread and go off for a long tearing tramp that'd last 'most all night. You know what a tremendous physique all the Gridley men have had. Well, Uncle Grid turned into work all the energy the rest of them spent in deviltry. Aunt Amelia said he'd go on like that day after day for a month, and then he'd bring out one of those essays folks are so crazy about. She said she never could bear to _look_ at his books ... seemed to her they were written in his blood. She told him so once and he said it was the only thing to do with blood like his.
gpt
My! My! I'd have said that there never was anybody more different from grandfather than uncle. Why, as he got on in years he didn't even look like him any more.
human
Oh, yes, that's what all this came out for. Aunt Amelia is just wild about this portrait. It's just a notion of hers, of course, but after what she told me I could see, easy, how the idea would come to her. It looks this way, she says, as though Uncle Grid inherited his father's physical make-up complete, and spent all his life fighting it ... and won out! And here's this picture making him look the way he would if he'd been the worst old ... as if he'd been like the Governor. She says she feels as though she was the only one to defend uncle ... as if it could make any difference to him! I guess the poor old lady is a little touched. Likely it's harder for her, losing uncle, than we realized. She just about worshiped him. Queer business, anyhow, wasn't it? Who'd ha' thought he was like that?
gpt
Did you tell the station agent to hold the trunk?
human
Well, no; I found the train was so late I thought maybe we could ... you know there's that business to-morrow ...!
gpt
That's a good idea. Sure we can. There's nothing we could do if we stayed. It's just a notion of Aunt 'Melia's, anyhow. I agree with her that it don't look so awfully like Uncle Grid, but, then, oil-portraits are never any good. Give me a photograph!
human
It's out of our line, anyhow,
gpt
he hastily assured M. Fallères after she had been half forced, half persuaded to retire,