“Mother! I have decided at last. I shall hang out my shingle in Dunellen. It is a picturesque little city, and the climate is as good for you as the south of France.”
“I am very glad,” she answered cordially. “You are a born physician, you are cool, you are quick, you are gentle; you can keep your feelings under perfect control. You are not quite a Stoic, but you will do very well for one.”
“But you will not be happy at Old Place without me.”
“Why should I be without you?”
“You have noticed that large, wide brick house on the opposite side of the Park from Miss Jewett’s? It has a garden and stable; it is just the house for us; you may have two rooms thrown into one for your sitting-room and any other changes that you please.”
“I remember it, I like the situation; there are English sparrows in the trees.”
“We will take that for the present. John Gesner owns it; he will make his own price if he sees that I want it, I suppose. I do want it. There are not many things that I desire more. You and I will have a green old age at Old Place.”
“You forget that I am thirty years older than you, my son.”
By accident, one day, Mrs. Towne had come across, in one of the drawers of her son’s writing-table, a large photograph of Tessa Wadsworth, a vignette, and she had gazed long upon her; the face was not beautiful, one would not even think of it as pretty, but it was fine, intellectual, sensitive, and sweet. In searching for an old letter not long before leaving home, she had discovered this picture, defaced and torn into several pieces.
“Ralph, you will not be angry with your white-headed old mother, but were you ever refused?”