"Love-making?" she repeated, bewildered.
"Blair has been talking to Elizabeth," he explained. "I believe they call themselves engaged."
Mrs. Maitland flung her head back with a loud laugh. At the shock of such a sound in such a place, one of the clerks in the other room spun round on his stool, and Mrs. Maitland, catching sight of him through the glass partition, broke the laugh off in the middle. "Well, upon my word!" she said.
"Of course it's all nonsense, but it must be stopped."
"Why?" said Mrs. Maitland. And her superintendent felt a jar of astonishment.
"They are children."
"Blair is sixteen," his mother said thoughtfully; "if he thinks he is in love with Elizabeth, it will help to make a man of him. Furthermore, I'd rather have him make love than make pictures;—that is his last fancy," she said, frowning. "I don't know how he comes by it. Of course, my husband did paint sometimes, I admit; but he never wanted to make a business of it. He was no fool, I can tell you, if he did make pictures!"
Robert Ferguson said dryly that he didn't think she need worry about Blair. "He has neither industry nor humility," he said, "and you can't be an artist without both of 'em. But as for this love business, they are children!"
Mrs. Maitland was not listening. "To be in love will be steadying him while he's at college. If he sticks to Elizabeth till he graduates, I sha'n't object."
"I shall object."