“Oh, I have taken great notice of it,” he said. “I never said anything, for what was the use when I couldn’t do anything; but you don’t suppose it didn’t hurt me very much to see that you were not receiving proper attention, mother? Of course I took notice of it! but words never do any good.”
“What a dear boy you are, Frank!” said his mother, kissing the tips of her fingers to him. It was not very often that she was flattered in this way. The flatter was usually done by herself. She was so well acquainted with it, that she was not so easily convinced of its sincerity, as others might have been; but still, sincere or not, there was no doubt that these were very nice things for Frank to say.
“But here it is your notice that everybody would seek, mother,” he continued. “It is you who would set the example, and everybody would follow. Nobody thinks of asking whether we are related to Lord Mowbray, here. We are just what we are, and the objects of respect. We are the best people in the place,” Frank said.
“That is what you have just said of the Buchanans, Frank—and I told you before—they are not of our monde.”
“What is our monde?” cried the young man. “It is not Lord Mowbray’s monde, nor the monde of the Rashleighs and those sort of people, mother, whom we used to run after. I am sure they said just what you are doing about us. They used to twist round their necks and thrust out their heads, and screw up their noses, don’t you remember?”
“Oh, and bow with their eyelids and smile with the edge of their lips,” cried Mrs. Mowbray. “I remember! How could I help remembering people not fit to tie our shoes, but with an odious little baronetcy in the family!”
“But nobody could do that here,” said Frank, with a feeling that he had conducted his argument very cleverly, and had carried her with him all along the line.
Mrs. Mowbray burst into a laugh. “Is it all for my benefit, to see me respected, that you would like to shut me up in this little hole for life,” she said.
Poor Frank was very much startled by this issue of his argument. He looked up at her half-piteous, half-angry.
“I don’t call it a little hole,” he said.