"But--but doesn't it seem that if I--did him a wrong, I ought to be willing to set it straight?"
"Well, naturally!" said Canning, and smiled a little, sadly, to see how white and sorrowful-eyed she looked. "If you did him a wrong. But that's just the point. I'm afraid I can't agree with the somewhat extreme view this friend of the poor fellow's seems to have put forward.... By the way," he added, finding the natural question popping in so suitably here, "who is this man that has talked with you about it, Carlisle? Your mother didn't go into particulars."
Carlisle felt some surprise. "Oh--I supposed she told you. Dr. Vivian--you remember--who ..."
The name took Canning completely aback.
"Vivian?--no!... That chap!..."
Both remembered in the same moment his quizzical complaint that this man was his hoodoo. Both felt that the pleasantry had a somewhat gritty flavor just now.
"I hadn't thought of him," said Canning, at once putting down his surprise and explaining it, "because I didn't think you knew him at all. In fact, I didn't know you'd ever seen him but once, or perhaps twice...."
Carlisle regretted that mamma had not explained all this. "I haven't more than three or four times.... Twice when I was with you, you remember, and then I met him again at Mr. Beirne's and the Cooneys'--some cousins of mine. You see--he was a great friend of--his...."
"And I suppose he has worried you about this every time he got anywhere near you?"
"No," Carlisle answered, laboriously, "I don't think he has ever mentioned it--since the first. Of course I've had hardly any conversation with him--and it's always been about the Works. You know, I told you he usually talked to me about that--"