Suddenly and without warning she began to beat
him on the head. He was compelled to knock her down in order to tear the
wrench out of her hand. After the incident she was ill in bed for a month.
Elsie Hunter was always a source of unhappiness to her brother. As he began
to get up in life Steve had a growing passion for being respected by his
fellows. It got to be something of an obsession with him and among other
things he wanted very much to be thought of as one who had good blood in
his veins. A man whom he hired searched out his ancestry, and with the
exception of his immediate family it seemed very satisfactory. The sister,
with her twisted body and her face that twitched so persistently, seemed
to be everlastingly sneering at him. He grew half afraid to come into her
presence. After he began to grow rich he married Ernestine, the daughter of
the soap maker at Buffalo, and when her father died she also had a great
deal of money. His own father died and he set up a household of his own.
That was in the time when big houses began to appear at the edge of the
berry lands and on the hills south of Bidwell. On his father's death Steve
became guardian for his sister. The jeweler had left a small estate and it
was entirely in the son's hands. Elsie lived with one servant in a small
house in town and was put in the position of being entirely dependent on
her brother's bounty.
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