"Yes, Alice takes hold of life generally with a kind of joyful enthusiasm that is delicious. And there is contagion in it; I enjoy the mid-week meetings better myself, since I have learned to plan for them as she does."
Everything considered, that last year of college life passed all too quickly, at least for Mrs. Burnham. There were times when she realized that the peculiarly close relations which she and her son had sustained for four beautiful winters could not, in reason, continue, and she shrank from any change. Yet for the most part she was strong in her gratitude that her son's college life had been what it had been, and that the most censorious could not discover any evil results from this long, close fellowship with his mother. There were still years of study for him. It had been decided that he would study law in the city where his father had practised it, and live at the old homestead, making daily trips to and from the larger city. In due course of time, therefore, they were once more settled at home for an indefinite period. Alice Warder had gone to the coast of Maine for a long-promised visit among her mother's relatives, but on her return, the Warders were again to become next-door neighbors.
Already in her letters to Mrs. Burnham, which were quite as frequent as those to Erskine, Alice Warder was planning certain functions in which "You and father, and Erskine and I" were in evidence.
There was one feature of the situation that troubled the mother. As the days passed the question which it involved grew more and more insistent. Why did not Erskine, at least, confide in her? Had he not from his very babyhood been in the habit of bringing to her not only every joy and sorrow, but every passing emotion or fancy, however trivial, until she had believed them as nearly one as it was possible for two people to become? Why then, in this supreme decision of his life, had she in a sense been counted out? No hint as to his new hopes and plans had been put into words for her; she had simply been left like the rest of the world to take things for granted.
There were times when this question probed her keenly. She struggled to discover whether she had been in fault. Despite her earnest efforts to hold herself well in check and give no sign of certain emotions which every true mother must feel at such an hour, had she failed? Had she appeared cold, or indifferent, or, worse than either, jealous? Despite her careful cross-examination of herself she could not lay her finger upon any word or act that she could make different; and she was obliged to content herself with redoubling her efforts to show her entire acceptance of Alice as one of them; but so far as any special confidences were concerned she did it in vain. Both Erskine and Alice were entirely frank in their manifest interest in each other, acting at all times as though they had nothing to conceal. They had even reached the stage when they claimed each other's time and attention as a matter of course, and so expressed themselves.