Mrs. Dallas hesitated; put up the end of her knitting-needle under her cap, and gently moved it up and down in meditative fashion.
"We wanted him to be an Englishman, Betty."
"Why, Mrs. Dallas? Is he not going to live in America?"
"Probably."
"Then why make an Englishman of him? That will make him discontented with things here."
"I hope not. He was not changed enough for that when he was here last.
Pitt does not change."
"He must be an extraordinary character!" said the young lady, with a glance at Pitt"s mother. "Dear Mrs. Dallas, how am I to understand that?"
"Pitt does not change," repeated the other.
"But one _ought_ to change. That is a dreadful sort of people, that go on straight over the heads of circ.u.mstances, just because they laid out the road there before the circ.u.mstances arose. I have seen such people.
They tread down everything in their way."
"Pitt does not change," Mrs. Dallas said again. Her companion thought she said it with a certain satisfied confidence. And perhaps it was true; but the moment after Mrs. Dallas remembered that if the proposition were universal it might be inconvenient.
"At least he is hard to change," she went on; "therefore his father and I wished him to be educated in the old country, and to form his notions according to the standard of things there. I think a republic is very demoralizing."
"Is the standard of morals lower here?" inquired the younger lady, demurely.
"I am not speaking of _morals_, in the usual sense. Of course, that-- But there is a little too much freedom here. And besides,--I wanted Pitt to be a true Church of England man."
"Isn"t he that?"
"Oh yes, I have no doubt he is now; but he had formed some a.s.sociations I was afraid of. With my son"s peculiar character, I thought there might be danger. I rely on you, Betty," said Mrs. Dallas, smiling, "to remove the last vestige."
The young lady gave a glance of quick, keen curiosity and understanding, in which sparkled a little amus.e.m.e.nt. "What can I do?"
she asked demurely.
"Bewitch him, as you do everybody."
"Bewitch him, and hand him over to you!" she remarked.
"No," said Mrs. Dallas; "not necessarily. You must see him, before you can know what you would like to do with him."
"Do I understand, then? He is supposed to be in some danger of lapsing from the true faith"--
"Oh, no, my dear! I did not say that. I meant only, if he had stayed in America. It seems to me there is a general loosening of all bonds here.
Boys and girls do their own way."
"Was it only the general spirit of the air, Mrs. Dallas, or was it a particular influence, that you feared?"
"Well--both," said Mrs. Dallas, again applying her knitting-needle under her cap.
The younger lady was silent a few minutes; going on with her embroidery.
"This is getting to be very interesting," she remarked.
"It is very interesting to me," replied the mother, with a thoughtful look. "For, as I told you, Pitt is a very fast friend, and persistent in all his likings and dislikings. Here he had none but the company of dissenters; and I did not want him to get _in_ with people of that persuasion."
"Is there much society about here? I fancied not."
"No society, for him. Country people--farmers--people of that stamp.
Nothing else."
"I should have thought, dear Mrs. Dallas, that _you_ would have been quite a sufficient counteraction to temptation from such a source?"
Mrs. Dallas hesitated. "Boys will be boys," she said.
"But he is not a boy now?"
"He is twenty-four."
"Not a boy, certainly. But do you know, that is an age when men are very hard to manage? It is easier earlier, or later."
"Not difficult to you at any time," said the other flatteringly.
The conversation dropped there; at least there came an interval of quiet working on the young lady"s part, and of rather listless knitting on the part of the mother, whose eyes went wistfully to the window without seeing anything. And this lasted till a step was heard at the front door. Mrs. Dallas let fall her needles and her yarn and rose hurriedly, crying out, "That is not Mr. Dallas!" and so speaking, rushed into the hall.
There was a little bustle, a smothered word or two, and then a significant silence; which lasted long enough to let the watcher left behind in the drawing-room conclude on the very deep relations subsisting between mother and son. Steps were heard moving at length, but they moved and stopped; there was lingering, and slow progress; and words were spoken, broken questions from Mrs. Dallas and brief responses in a stronger voice that was low-pitched and pleasant. The figures appeared in the doorway at last, but even there lingered still.
The mother and son were looking into one another"s faces and speaking those absorbed little utterances of first meeting which are insignificant enough, if they were not weighted with such a burden of feeling. Miss Betty, sitting at her embroidery, cast successive rapid glances of curiosity and interest at the new-comer. His voice had already made her pulses quicken a little, for the tone of it touched her fancy. The first glance showed him tall and straight; the second caught a smile which was both merry and sweet; a third saw that the level brows expressed character; and then the two people turned their faces towards her and came into the room, and Mrs. Dallas presented her son.
The young lady rose and made a reverence, according to the more stately and more elegant fashion of the day. The gentleman"s obeisance was profound in its demonstration of respect. Immediately after, however, he turned to his mother again; a look of affectionate joy shining upon her out of his eyes and smile.
"Two years!" she was exclaiming. "Pitt, how you have changed!"
"Have I? I think not much."
"No, in one way not much. I see you are your old self. But two years have made you older."
"So they should."
"Somehow I had not expected it," said the mother, pa.s.sing her hand across her eyes with a gesture a little as if there were tears in them.
"I thought I should see _my_ boy again--and he is gone."
"Not at all!" said Pitt, laughing. "Mistaken, mother. There is all of him here that there ever was. The difference is, that now there is something more."
"What?" she asked.
"A little more experience--a little more knowledge--let us hope, a little more wisdom."
"There is more than that," said the mother, looking at him fondly.
"What?"