"Really!" he exclaimed at last, when two o'clock struck. "I am teaching you very bad ways, mother! I say, do you suppose that Miriam Moss will dream of forfeits to-night? She's a very precocious little girl! It's odd how early Jewesses develop. I've known other women of twenty or one and twenty not a quarter so 'formed' as she is."
His mother looked anxiously at him. "You are not thinking of marrying her, are you?" she asked. "You should do better than that, my son. The Mosses are rich, certainly; but I should like to see you go in for a title, myself; and you needn't be afraid that I'll stand in your way when you want to bring a wife home. Indeed, I'd like to have a grandson on my knee before I die, George; though I don't deny that it's been luck for me, in some respects, that you haven't married before. 'A son's a son till he gets him a wife.' Still, it's time now; and, if I were you, I'd look not lower than a county family. You've got money enough. And you may tell the lady from me," and her hard old face softened at the words, "you may tell her from me, that she'll be a lucky woman, for your vulgar old mother says so, and she has had reason enough to swear to it."
George laughed, and put his arm round her. The caress meant a good deal more than all the pretty speeches he had made to Miriam.
"The lucky young woman of title to whom I shall so kindly condescend to throw the handkerchief hasn't appeared on the horizon yet," he said. "When she does, she shan't turn up her highly aristocratic little nose at you, mother! Nobody shall come between you and me."
Mrs. Sauls nodded till her earrings twinkled again. "So much the better for me, my son; but wives aren't so amenable as mothers. Don't answer for her too soon!"
"One can answer for any woman—just as far as one can see her, eh?" said George, yawning; and his mother looked hard at him.
Possibly she guessed that the horizon had not been quite so clear as he would have had her believe; and had a pretty shrewd suspicion that something besides work had deepened the lines on his face. But she was wise in her generation, and kept her counsel.
He talked on for some time, chiefly on business, after that; bidding her good-night only when the dawn began to creep through the shutters.
"Good-night, my dear," said his mother, "and God bless you for a good son, as I'm sure He ought."
She had a wistful feeling while she said the words that Providence had somehow been unduly hard on George lately. Her son laughed profanely: "I believe you think that the Almighty is rather honoured in having me to bless!"