"Yes, yes!" he contradicted. "Even to marry an opera singer, you were glad to see me go! But about mamma: I suppose you mean that she will sit in a Mechlin cap and knit, with a blue Angora cat on the rug beside her, and hear this little lady in the bassinet here say her lessons?"
Something very like this had been in Wilhelmina's mind and she admitted it.
"Well," young Elliot said, reflectively, "all I can say is, I don't think so. There's something about mamma that you can't be sure of."
"Why, Elly, what do you mean?"
"I can't explain it exactly," he said, "but she's very deep—mamma. Father doesn't understand her, you know."
"Now, Elliot, that is rank nonsense!" his sister contradicted. "You remind me of that nurse Dr. Stanchon sent up when mamma had that fit of not sleeping last year. She and mamma got on famously, from the first; she stayed out of doors all night with her till mamma got to sleeping again. She was used to it—the nurse, I mean—and didn't mind, she said, she'd been doing it in the Adirondacks.
"I remember asking her why she thought mamma should have insomnia—for there was nothing whatever on her mind, and they say that's the cause, you know. She gave me the strangest look.
"'Are you sure your mother has nothing on her mind?' she asked me, 'your mother's very deep, you know!'
"'What nonsense, Miss Jessop!' I told her. 'Mamma's as open as the day!'"
Elliot laughed.