“I hardly know how to advise; different people feel so differently. If it were my son I should not invite him home, at present. Let him suffer awhile for his misdeed. He ought to be punished.”
“Yes, and he will be punished, when he comes to his senses and sees what a mésalliance he has made, though of course she enticed him,” Mrs. Churchill said, her mother’s heart pleading for her boy; whereas Mrs. Burton, who had never been a mother, and who felt a little piqued that after knowing Maude Somerton, Charlie could have chosen so unwisely, was very severe in her condemnation of both parties, and spoke her mind freely.
“Probably this Browning girl did entice him, but he should not have yielded, and he must expect to pay the penalty. I, for one, cannot promise to receive her on terms of equality; and Georgie, I am sure, will not, she is so fastidious and particular. Maybe she will see them. Did I tell you she had gone West?—started yesterday morning on the early train? She expected to be in Buffalo last night, and take this morning’s train for Chicago, where she is going to see a child, a relative of her step-mother, who died not long since. I am sorry she happens to be gone just now, when Roy is so helpless. She could read to him, and amuse him so much.”
It was evident that Mrs. Burton was thinking far more of Georgie than of her friend’s trouble; but the few words she had spoken on the subject had settled the matter and changed the whole current of Edna Browning’s life, and when, at last, she took her leave, and went out to her carriage, Mrs. Churchill had resolved to do her duty, and set her son’s sins before him in their proper light.
But she did not tell Roy so. She would rather he should not know all she had been saying to Mrs. Burton.
So to his suggestion that she should write to Charlie that day, she answered that she would, but added:
“I can’t write a lie, and tell him he will be welcome here at once. I must wait awhile before doing that.”
To this Roy did not object. A little discipline would do Charlie good, he believed; and so he signed a check for five hundred dollars, and then tried to sleep, while his mother wrote to Charlie. It was a severe letter, aimed more at Edna than her boy, and told of her astonishment and indignation that her son should have been led into so imprudent an act. Then she descanted upon runaway matches, and unequal matches; and said he must expect it would be a long time before she could forgive him, or receive “Miss Browning” as her daughter. Then she quoted Mrs. Burton, and Georgie, and Roy, whose feelings were so outraged, and advised Charlie to tell Miss Browning at once that every dollar he had came from his brother; “for,” she added in conclusion,
“I cannot help feeling that if she had known this fact, your unfortunate entanglement would have been prevented.
“Your aggrieved and offended mother,