“I believe so. I wish she was here now to help me, for I shall never get these mended. What makes you wear out your socks so fast?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure, unless it’s beating time to Miss Grey’s lively music. Don’t she play like the mischief, though?”
Mrs. Gordon did not answer, and Will continued, “Let me help you mend. I used to in college and in Europe, too, and if I never marry,”—here Will’s voice trembled a little—“I shall need to know how. Thread me a darning needle, won’t you?”
Mrs. Gordon laughingly compiled with his request, and the fashionable Will Gordon was soon deep in the mysteries of sock-darning, an accomplishment in which he had before had some experience. Very rapidly his mother’s amiability increased, until at last he ventured to say, “Let me see, how old am I?”
“Thirty, last August, just twenty years younger than I am.”
“Then, when you were at my age you had a boy ten years old. I wonder how I should feel in a like predicament.”
“I’m afraid you’ll never know,” and Mrs. Gordon commenced on a fresh sock.
“Mother, how would you to have me marry and settle down?” Will continued, after a moment’s silence, and his mother replied, “Well enough, provided I liked your wife.”
“You don’t suppose I’d marry one you didn’t like, I hope. Just look, can you beat that?” and he held up what he fancied to be a neatly darned sock, which, spite of its bungling appearance, received so much praise, that he felt emboldened to proceed.
Taking Frederic’s letter from his pocket he passed it to his mother, asking her to read it, and give him her opinion.