““My mother was annoyed with me throughout their visit—ostensibly because I wasn’t being a good enough hostess to the cousins, but really because she found it overwhelming to have so many members of my father’s family staying; but they were all so good-natured that she couldn’t show it, or even allow that she was mildly irritable. The cousins were there on my father’s account, and she wanted very much to be a good enough person not to be annoyed, because he himself was that sort of good person, and put up with my mother’s family without ever, apparently, losing his temper.””
