Free Envious Casca by Georgette Heyer

of one whose days were attended by anguish bravely borne: "The least touch brings it on!"
    "Rubbish!" said Paula, with quite unnecessary emphasis. "You weren't even thinking about your lumbago a minute ago! You're a miserable humbug, Uncle Nat!"
    Nathaniel rather liked being abused, but he resented having his lumbago belittled, and said that the day might come when Paula would be sorry she had said that.
    Maud, who was rolling up her knitting-wool, said in her sensible way that he had better have some antiphlogistin, if it was really bad.
    "Of course it's bad!" snapped Nathaniel. "And don't think I'm going to have any of that muck on me, because I'm not! If anyone had the least consideration - But I suppose that's too much to expect! As though it isn't enough to have the house filled with a set of rackety people, I'm forced to sit and listen to a play I should have thought any decent woman would have blushed to sit through!"
    "When you talk about decent women you make me sick!" flashed Paula. "If you can't appreciate a work of genius, so much the worse for you! You don't want to put your hand in your pocket: that's why you're making all this fuss! You're mean, and hypocritical, and I despise you from the bottom of my soul!"
    "Yes, you'd be very glad to see me laid underground! I know that!" said Nathaniel, hugely enjoying this refreshing interlude. "Don't think I don't see through you! All the same, you women: money's all you're out for! Well, you won't get any of mine to waste on that young puppy, and that's flat!"
    "All right!" said Paula, in the accents of a tragedienne. "Keep your money! But when you're dead I shall spend every penny you leave me on really immoral plays, and I shall hope that you'll know it, and hate it, and be sorry you were such a beast to me when you were alive!"
    Nathaniel was so pleased by this vigorous response to his taunt that he forgot to be a cripple, and sat up quite straight in his chair, and said that she had better not count her chickens before they were hatched, since after this he would be damned if he didn't Make a Few Changes.
    "Do as you please!" Paula said disdainfully. "I don't want your money."
    "Oho, now you sing a different tune!" Nathaniel said, his eyes glinting with triumph. "I thought that that was just what you did want - two thousand pounds of my money, and ready to murder me to get it!"
    "What are two thousand pounds to you?" demanded Paula, with poor logic, but fine dramatic delivery. "You'd never miss it, but just because you have a bourgeois taste in art you deny me the one thing I want! More than that! You are denying me my chance in life!"
    "I don't care for that line," said Stephen critically.
    "You shut up!" said Paula, rounding on him. "You've done all you can to crab Willoughby's play! I suppose your tender regard for me makes you shudder at the thought of my appearing in the role of a prostitute!"
    "Bless your heart, I don't care what sort of a role you appear in!" replied Stephen. "All I beg is that you won't stand there ranting like Lady Macbeth. Too much drama in the home turns my stomach, I find."
    "If you had a shred of decency, you'd be on my side!"
    "In that case, I haven't a shred of decency. I don't like the play, I don't like the dramatist, and I object to being read to."
    "Children, children!" said Joseph. "Come now, this won't do, you know! On Christmas Eve, too!"
    "Now I am going to be sick," said Stephen, dragging himself up, and lounging over to the door. "Let me know the outcome of this Homeric battle, won't you? I'm betting six to four on Uncle Nat myself."
    "Well, really, Stephen!" exclaimed Valerie, with a giggle. "I do think you're the limit!"
    This infelicitous intervention seemed to remind Nathaniel of her existence. He glared at her, loathing her empty prettiness, her crimson fingernails, her irritating laugh; and gave vent to his feelings by barking at Stephen. "You're as bad as your sister! There isn't a penny to choose between you! You've