“That’s good,” I said; and the more I thought of it the better it seemed. A new element would be infused into our home life with his advent, and I confidently believed that the widow’s society would be vastly more tolerable when he was among us. George had been so long in Paris that he had become a veritable Parisian. That he would bring along with him a large amount of Paris sunshine and vivacity to enliven the atmosphere of our little circle, I felt certain.
“Is he coming to stay?” I asked.
“He don’t know. He says he never makes any plans for six months ahead. It will depend upon circumstances.”
“Well, that’s Parisian. I’m very glad he’s coming, and I hope circumstances will keep him here. Isn’t old Dr. Jones pretty nearly dead? Seems to me George could take his practice.”
“Now, Charlie!”
“It’s all right, puss; doctors must die as well as their patients.”
I broached the subject to mother-in-law at the supper-table, and—mirabile dictu!—she agreed with me that we must keep George with us when we got him.
In November George arrived. He didn’t telegraph from New York, but came right on by a night train, and, walking into the house while we were at breakfast, took us by surprise.
Mrs. Pinkerton taken by surprise was a funny phenomenon, and I’m afraid propriety received a pretty smart blow when she threw her napkin into a plate of buckwheat cakes, dropped her eye-glasses, and rushed to meet the long-lost prodigal.
As for George, he brought such a gale into the house with him—there are plenty of them on the Atlantic in November—that everything seemed metamorphosed. He laughed and shouted, and hugged first one of us and then another, and finally sat down and ate breakfast enough for six Frenchmen, every minute ripping out some wicked little French oath and winking at his mother with the utmost complacency. Never since I had become an inmate of the cottage had we enjoyed a meal so much as that one. There was an abandon, an insouciance, an esprit, a je-ne-sais-quoi about this young frog-eater that thoroughly carried away the whole party, including even Mrs. Pinkerton.