“Your mother does not like me,” Molyneux said to her one day, when Mrs. Eastwood, disturbed and worried by a communication from his father, had been cold and distant to him. “It is always the way. She was nice enough as long as I was only a young fellow dangling about the house; but as soon as everything is settled, and you are ready to have me, Nelly, she turns off at a tangent. Clearly, your mother does not like me——”
“How can you say so?” cried Nelly. “Oh, Ernest, as if it were possible——”
“Quite possible,—indeed, quite common,” he said, shaking his head. “You don’t know the world, darling, and I don’t wish you to; but when people have to make sacrifices to establish their children, they don’t like it. Nobody likes to have a sacrifice to make. I suppose I thought your mother different, because she was your mother; but human nature is the same everywhere,—though you, Nelly, Heaven be praised, have no knowledge of the world——”
“Is it mamma you mean by the world?” said Nelly, disengaging herself almost unconsciously from her lover’s arm.
“Don’t be vexed dear. Mothers are just like other people. When our interests come to be in opposition to those of our nearest and dearest——”
“How can mamma’s interests be in opposition to ours?” said Nelly, with open eyes.
“Well, I suppose our parents have got to provide for us,” said Molyneux. “They have got to part with so much, on one side and the other, to set us up—and they don’t like it—naturally. When it comes to be our turn we shall not like it either. There is always a struggle going on, though your dear, innocent eyes don’t see it; we trying to get as much as we can, they to give us as little as they can;—that is what makes your mother look so glum at me.”
“We trying to get as much as we can,—they to give us as little as they can?” repeated Nelly, with a dreamy wonder in her tone. She dwelt on the words as if she were counting them, like beads. She had withdrawn, quite involuntarily and unawares, from his side.
“I don’t want to vex you about it,” he said, drawing closer to her. “It can’t be helped, and after it is settled, things will come right again. You don’t know anything about business, and I don’t want you to know about it——”
“I know all about mamma’s business,” said Nelly. She withdrew again with a little impatience from his close approach. She fell amusing and thinking, and made some excuse, soon after, to get away from him. She was startled beyond measure in the straight-forwardness of a soul unacquainted with business. Very strange to her was this unexpected distinction and separation. Was it really possible that her mother’s interests were opposite to her own, for the first time in her life? “We trying to get as much as we can,—they to give us as little as they can,” she said to herself, in the solitude of her room, putting the fingers of one hand against those of the other, as if to count the words. Nelly was bewildered,—her head was dizzy through this strange whirlabout of heaven and earth,—the firm ground seemed failing beneath her feet.