Jack dropped his mother's hand from his arm with more emphasis than politeness, and stopped to face her on the corner of the street.
"The very Old Boy is in you to-day, mother," he said. "I won't listen to another word."
She regarded him with a saucy, laughing face, and put out her hand.
"Well, good-night then," she said. "Come in and see me as soon as you can. I have a lot of things to tell you about Washington. By the way, what do you think of my going there, and setting up as a lobbyist? They say women make no end of money that way."
He swung hastily round, and left her without a word. She went on her way, but her face turned suddenly careworn and haggard as she walked in the gathering twilight toward the little apartment where she lived in fashionable poverty.
VIII
THE TEST OF LOVE
One of the distinctive features of "good society" is that its talk is chiefly of persons. Less distinguished circles may waste precious time on the discussion of ideas, but in company really select such conversation is looked upon as dull and pedantic. One of the first requisites for entrance into the world of fashion is a thorough knowledge of the concerns of those who are included in its alluring round; and not to be informed in this branch of wisdom marks at once the outsider. It follows that concealment of personal affairs is pretty nearly impossible. Humanity being frail, it frequently happens that fashionable folk delude themselves by the fond belief that they have escaped the universal law of their surroundings; but the minute familiarity which each might boast of all that relates to his neighbors should undeceive them. That of which all the world talks is not to be concealed.
Everybody in their set knew perfectly well that Jack Neligage had been in love with Alice Endicott from the days when they had paddled in the sand on the walks of the Public Garden. The smart nursery maids whose occupation it was to convey their charges thither and keep them out of the fountains, between whiles exchanging gossip about the parents of the babies, had begun the talk. The opinions of fashionable society are generally first formed by servants, and then served up with a garnish of fancifully distorted facts for the edification of their mistresses; and in due time the loves of the Public Garden, reported and decorated by the nursery maids, serve as topics for afternoon calls. Master Jack was known to be in love with Miss Alice before either of them could have written the word, and in this case the passion had been so lasting that it excited remark not only for itself as an ordinary attachment, but as an extraordinary case of unusual constancy.