Choking with tears, Mrs. Worthington said:
"You wrong me, Hugh; I do try to make something of you. You are a dear child to me, dearer than the other, but I'm a weak woman, and 'Lina sways me at will."
A kind word unmanned Hugh at once, and kneeling by his mother, he put his arms around her, and asked again her care for Adah.
"Hugh," and Mrs. Worthington looked him steadily in the face, "is Adah your wife, or Willie your child?"
"Great guns, mother!" and Hugh started to his feet as quick as if a bomb had exploded at his side. "No! Are you sorry, mother, to find me better than you imagined it possible for a bad boy like me to be?"
"No, Hugh, not sorry. I was only thinking that I've sometimes fancied that, as a married man, you might be happier, even if you did lose Spring Bank; and when this woman came so strangely, and you seemed so interested, I didn't know, I rather thought—"
"I know," and Hugh interrupted her. "You thought, maybe, I raised Ned when I was in New York; and, as a proof of said resurrection, Mrs. Ned and Ned, Junior, had come with their baggage."
If the hair was golden instead of brown, and the eyes a different shade, he shouldn't "make so tremendous a fuss," he thought; and, with a sigh to the memory of the lost Golden Hair, he turned abruptly to his mother, and as if she had all the while been cognizant of his thoughts, said:
"But that's nothing to do with the case in question. Will you be kind to Adah Hastings, for my sake? And when Ad rides her highest horse, as she is sure to do, will you smooth her down? Tell her Adah has as good a right here as she, if I choose to keep her."
"I never meddle with your affairs," and there was a tone of whining complaint in Mrs. Worthington's voice; "I never pry and you never tell, so I don't know how much you are worth, but I can judge somewhat, and I don't think you are able."