Explore "One Man in His Time" by Ellen Glasgow on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
At breakfast the next morning, Mrs. Culpeper observed, with maternal solicitude, that Stephen was looking more cheerful. While she poured his coffee, with one eye on the fine old coffee pot and one on the animated face of her son, she reflected that he appeared to have come at last to his senses. "If he would only stop all this folly and settle down," she thought. "Surely it is quite time now for him to become normal again. " As she looked at him her expression softened, in spite of her general attitude of disapprobation, and the sharp brightness of her eyes gave place to humid tenderness. Of all her children he had long been her favourite, for the reason, perhaps, that he was the only one who had ever caused her any anxiety; and though she would have gone to the stake cheerfully for all and each of them, there would have been a keener edge to the martyrdom she suffered in Stephen's behalf.
"Be sure and make a good breakfast, Mr. Culpeper," she urged, glancing down the table to where her husband was dividing his attention between the morning paper and his oatmeal. "My poor father used to say that if he didn't make a good breakfast he felt it all day long."