She knew the dream that her husband had built, and that with it he had purposely blinded his eyes and dulled his ears to the truth which the mother heart would have been glad to deny, but could not. Some day one of the children would go away, and then the other. It was only right and just that it should be so, for as they two had built their own home and their own lives and their little family circle, so their children must do even as they.
It was going to be hard on them both, much harder on the father, because of that dream that had become an obsession. Mrs. Pennington feared that it might break his spirit, for it would leave him nothing to plan for and hope for as he had planned and hoped for this during the twenty-two years that they had spent upon Ganado.
Now that Grace was going to the city, how could they hope to keep their boy content upon the ranch? She knew he loved the old place, but he was entitled to see the world and to make his own place in it—not merely to slide spinelessly into the niche that another had prepared for him.
“I am worried about the boy,” she said presently.
“How? In what way?” he asked.
“He will be very blue and lonely after Grace goes,” she said.
“Don’t talk to me about it!” cried the colonel, banging his glass down upon the table and rising to his feet. “It makes me mad just to think of it. I can’t understand how Grace can want to leave this beautiful world to live in a damned city! She’s crazy! What’s her mother thinking about, to let her go?”
“You must remember, dear,” said his wife soothingly, “that every one is not so much in love with the country as you, and that these young people have their own careers to carve in the way they think best. It would not be right to try to force them to live the way we like to live.”
“Damned foolishness, that’s what it is!” he blustered. “An actress! What does she know about acting?”
“She is beautiful, cultured, and intelligent. There is no reason why she should not succeed and make a great name for herself. Why shouldn’t she be ambitious, dear? We should encourage her, now that she has determined to go. It would help her, for she loves us all—she loves you as a daughter might, for you have been like a father to her ever since Mr. Evans died.”