"Mother!" Archie said hesitatingly.
Mrs. Stuart looked round. "Oh, you're not gone yet!" she said, though she had been aware of the fact before.
Archie walked off at once, and banged the front door. Mrs. Stuart saw him pass the window.
A change came over her face then. The thin nose began to work, and the thin lips to tremble. She had not expected Archie to take her at her word. Though Mrs. Stuart was a proud woman, with a cold manner and a bad temper, yet down below she had a loving heart towards this only boy.
Al! the morning she had been working for him; and in the oven now were the rice pudding and the fruit tart which he liked.
Mrs. Stuart was wounded to the very quick. It seemed so hard that he should turn against her, only for the sake of these new people, almost strangers to her. She did not want to know the Dunns. She looked upon their standing as inferior to her own; and Mrs. Stuart was a proud-spirited woman, very particular as to whom she would associate with. Moreover, there was a girl at Woodbine Cottage—a pretty winning girl. People had not been backward in talking about Nancy's looks, and about Archie Stuart's evident admiration. That was just the thing which Mrs. Stuart most feared. She wanted to keep her boy to herself for many a year to come.
A neighbour had run in before dinner to gossip about the matter, having seen from her window Archie's encounter with the Dunn family on their way to Church.
"And you may depend upon it, things won't stop there," the neighbour had been so kind as to add. "Archie's a likely young fellow, and he'll be easy caught; and Mrs. Dunn's a woman that knows what she's about."
This was enough for Mrs. Stuart, and she gave her caller very plainly to understand that nothing of the kind ever would or should come to pass. Archie was not going to marry anybody yet awhile, and most certainly he was not going to marry Nancy Dunn.
Poor Mrs. Stuart! She had never yet learnt that difficult lesson, which almost all have sooner or later to learn—that we cannot have our own way in life, either for ourselves or for others.