“I wish,” she continued, “that Mr. Barr did not listen so eagerly to him. We were in hopes of your coming to Boston, but now that he has caught the Western fever, nothing will cure him but an experience of the West. Mr. Curtis thinks you are both unfit for Chicago.”
“I know we are.”
“Poor child!” she exclaimed. “I intended to have taken such good care of you.”
Then tears sprang to my eyes. I leaned my head against her breast, and if she had been an Englishwoman, she would have kissed me.
It was, alas, quite true that Robert had fallen completely under the spell of his enemy. His lure had been the wonderful West, which Robert was now determined to visit, before we definitely settled, “We will go as far as Buffalo, Milly,” he said to me, “see Niagara, and cross into Canada. We may find just what we like in Canada. If so, we shall still be under 148 the British flag. If we do not like Canada, then we will go westward to Chicago.”
I pleaded for a trial of Boston, but Robert would not listen to me. “Every one on the ship says, ‘Go west,’” he replied. “Let us see with our own eyes, and judge for ourselves.”
I was grieved and offended at the time, but I can understand now the influence primarily working against Boston. He longed for rest and travel and change. All his life he had been kept strictly to his lessons, and his business. He had never had a holiday, unless his mother and sister and her children were with him, and this going where he liked, seeing what he liked, doing what he liked, and resting whenever he wished to rest, possessed irresistible charms. He could not deny himself. He could not go to Boston and settle at once to business of some kind. I do not blame him. He had had no youth. He was naturally poetic and romantic, but
“Even his childhood knew nothing better,
Than bills of creditor and debtor——”
while the modern spirit of travel and recreation was just beginning to make both age and youth restless and expectant.