But how relieved and pleased he had looked when she made haste to assure him that there was not, and that she would be quietly happy with her book all the evening, and there was no need at all for his hastening home. And besides--she paused over that connecting phrase and tried to formulate her fears. How had her son conveyed to her heart the feeling that the time to which it seemed to her she had always looked forward--the time when he would look upon some other woman with eyes that were no longer indifferent, had come?
She could not have put it into words; but though she arose, at last, and put away her book as something that seemed to have failed her, and sat down at her desk to spend an hour with Marian Dennis, and abandoned her, presently, for Flossy Shipley, and gave them both up after the second page, and selected another book with the firm determination to compel herself to read it, the simple truth is that she spent the entire evening, and a large portion of the night as well, with one Mamie Parker.
THE next morning Mrs. Burnham came into her pretty parlor, where a dainty breakfast table was laid for two, prepared to be as wise as a serpent over the new situation. She was genial, sympathetic, and not too penetrative in her questions. Erskine had come home late, much later than he had ever been before; yet apparently his mother had not noticed it.
She did not even ask at what time he had come. In truth she needed no information, but how was Erskine to know that?
Did he have a pleasant evening, and was the occasion all that it should have been? He was not enthusiastic. It was pleasant enough, he said. In some respects very pleasant; only--well, a few of the boys were noisier than was agreeable, and two or three of them did not apparently know how to treat ladies.
"Oh, nothing objectionable, of course," he said quickly, in response to her startled look.
"They are so used to being alone that they grow loud-voiced and careless about the small proprieties, or at least courtesies; I fancy some of their ways must have seemed peculiar to Miss Parker."
"The other girls? Oh, they are used to such things; they were the sisters and cousins of the boys, and the ways of a lot of fellows accustomed chiefly to their own society would not seem so strange to the others; but Miss Parker is--at least I hope, I mean I think she--" He caught himself and left the sentence unfinished save by a half-embarrassed laugh, which changed into a slight frown.