So it came about that when Charles appeared the next evening, fortified with one of the village hacks, Lois went down to inspect him. Amzi had returned to the bank, and Phil was changing her gown.
Charles, having expressed his appreciation of Mrs. Holton's courtesy, found difficulty in concealing the emotions she aroused in him. He had expected to feel uncomfortable in the presence of this lady, of whom her former husband, his uncle, had spoken so bitterly; but she was not at all the sort of person one would suspect of being in league with the Devil—an alliance vouched for in profane terms by Jack Holton. Charles liked new sensations, and it was positively thrilling to stand face to face with this woman who had figured so prominently in his family history.
He placed a chair for her with elaborate care, and bowed her into it. She was a much more smoothly finished product than her daughter. He liked "smart" women, and Mrs. Holton was undeniably "smart." Her languid grace, the faint hints of sachet her raiment exhaled; her abrupt, crisp manner of speaking—in innumerable ways she was delightful and satisfying. She was a woman of the world: as a man of the world he felt that they understood each other without argument. The disparity of their years was not so great as to exclude the hope that little attentions from him would be grateful to her; it was a fair assumption that a woman who had dismissed two husbands would not be averse to the approaches of a presentable young man. He wished to fix himself in her mind as one who breathed naturally the ampler ether of her own world. It would be easier to win Phil with her mother as an ally.
"You did go to Madison? I suppose all good Montgomery boys go to the home college."
"Well, of course that was one of my mistakes. You never quite recover what you lose by going to these little freshwater colleges. You never quite get the jay out of your system."
The obvious reply to this was that in his case it had not mattered, for patently he did not even remotely suggest the state or condition of jayness; but Mrs. Holton ignored the opportunity to appease his vanity.
"Oh!"
Phil's "Oh" was ambiguous enough; but her mother's was even more baffling.
"Of course, we all love Madison," he hastened to add; "but I'm around a good deal, here and there over the country, and when I meet Yale and Harvard men I always feel that I have missed something; there is a difference."
"Clothes—neckties?" suggested Mrs. Holton.