Her companion shook off the ash from his cigar into the fire.
"You did the talking, I'm sure," he responded dryly, and his manner made her determined to be doubly careful how she proceeded.
"This place should build him up," she said. "He seems a rather fragile boy."
"Yes. He grew too fast; makes him rather weedy. Too bad he didn't keep pace mentally. He's weedy there, too."
"I should think it might be well to have him tutored for an hour a day while he is here." Mrs. Lowell tried to speak carelessly as she kept her eyes on the blaze.
"How could you find a tutor in a place like this?" was the response. "Surely Mr. Pratt and Mr. Evans—I understand they are teachers—wouldn't take kindly to the task of trying to find Bert's brains while they're on their vacation."
"No, I was thinking of a very simple plan. Miss Burridge's niece, Veronica, would perhaps be glad to work with the boy an hour a day. She has a good common education."
"Nothing doing, Mrs. Lowell." Nicholas Gayne sat up in his chair and evidently put a constraint upon himself. "You come upon this problem as a new one and you think you understand it, but you don't. You think it's not hopeless, but it is. The boy began by being backward and he's got worse and worse all his life. He couldn't keep up with any class in school and I finally took him out. Oh, I've done my best, believe me. I had a tutor come to the house for a while, but I was finally convinced that Bert hadn't the equipment to think with. Of course, there's schools for deficient children, but have you got any idea what they cost? I'm a poor man. I couldn't pay what they tax you. Bert'll end up in an institution, that's the place for him; but I'm soft-hearted. I'll keep him with me as long as I can. The doctors all warn you that it isn't safe. That kind of weak intellect is liable to take a dangerous turn any time. There's thousands of cases where relations have insisted on keeping morons like Bert near them too long. I only hope I shan't. Just take my advice, Mrs. Lowell, and don't have much to say to the boy. He gets along best when he's left alone. It doesn't do to try to wake up that kind of a brain. There's no normal balance there, and any sharpening is liable to make it take a wrong shoot. I've been on this problem five years, and, believe me, I know something about it."
The speaker's voice grew more and more blustering as he proceeded, and Mrs. Lowell could feel her limbs trembling with the intensity of her own feeling and the necessity for concealing her thoughts from him.
"He is your brother's child, I understand," she said quietly, when Gayne had made his last emphatic gesture and sunk back in his chair, red in the face.