Her nervousness increased.
"Take some more gravy, Scott," she urged him hurriedly. "You'd better dip it on your bread as soon as you can; it gets cold so soon, these winter mornings."
But he ignored the spoon she offered him. When he spoke, it was with a curious hesitation.
"Mother, did I tell you what Professor Mansfield said?"
"Yes."
"Weren't you glad—just a very little?" His tone was boyish in its pleading.
Mrs. Brenton's answer was evasive.
"Of course, Scott. I am always glad, when your teachers speak well of you," she said.
"Yes; but think of it," he urged impatiently. "I hate to brag, mother; but do you take in all he meant: that he saw no reason, if I kept on, that I should not make a record as a chemist?"
While he spoke, his gray eyes were fixed on her imploringly. Under some conditions and in some connections, she would have been swift to read in them the text of his unspoken prayer; but not now. Her ancestral tendencies forbade: those and the doubts which centred in her son's other heritage, less orthodox and far, far less under the domination of the spiritual. Now and then the boy looked like his father, astoundingly like, and disturbingly. This was one of the times.