“H. S. H. doesn’t improve with age,” he replied carelessly. “She never troubled herself about Jessie.”
“Perhaps no one gave her cause. My dear boy, I am very sorry for you,” and she laid her hand within his arm.
“Have they been baiting you? Poor little Mother Carey!” he said. “Force of habit, you know, that’s all. Never mind them.”
“Bobus, my dear, I must speak, and in earnest. I am afraid you may be going on so as to make yourself and—some one else unhappy, and you ought to know that your father was quite as determined as your uncle against marriages between first cousins.”
“My dear mother, it will be quite time to argue that point when the matter becomes imminent. I am not asking to marry any one before I am called to the bar, and it is very hard if we cannot, in the meantime, live as cousins.”
“Yes, but there must be no attempt to be ‘a little more than kin.’”
“Less than kind comes in on the other side!” said Bobus, in his throat. “I tell you the child is a child who has no soul apart from her sister, and there’s no use in disturbing her till she has grown up to have a heart and a will of her own.”
“Then you promise to let her alone?”
“I pledge myself to nothing,” said Bobus, in an impracticable voice. “I only give warning that a commotion will do nobody any good.”
She knew he had not abandoned his intention, and she also knew she had no power to make him abandon it, so that all she could say was, “As long as you make no move there will be no commotion, but I only repeat my assurance that neither your uncle nor I, acting in the person, of your dear father, will ever consent.”