“But I do,” said his mother, “a dreadful little hole! where you have to make yourself agreeable to all sorts of people whom you would never speak to, nor look at in society! Why, Frank, there is nobody here in society. Not one that you would like to walk along Bond Street with. Think of going along Rotten Row with any one of those girls on your arm.”
“I should be very proud,” cried Frank, very red, “to go anywhere with one of them on my arm.”
“My poor dear boy,” cried Mrs. Mowbray, “I knew that was what you meant all the time. I always forget that you have come to the age for that sort of thing. Only think how you would look if you were to meet Lady Marion, and she were to begin to ask her questions. ‘Who was the young lady, and who were her friends in town?’ ‘Oh, she doesn’t know anybody in town.’ ‘Where did she come from?’ ‘Oh, not a place you ever heard of in your life, a little town in Scotland.’ ‘Yes, Lord Laidlaw lives near, of course she knows the Laidlaws?’ ‘Oh, no, she never heard of them; oh, no, she knows nobody. She is only a minister’s daughter, and except that she is prettyish——’”
Mrs. Mowbray had the art of a mimic; and she had made her sketch of the Lady Marion who asked questions, very amusing to her son, who had been in his little way cross-examined by Lady Marion many times: but when she described the young lady as prettyish, the young man bounded from his chair.
“Take care, mother! no one, not even you, shall speak so of Elsie. I won’t have it,” he cried.
“You would be obliged to have it, dear, if you had her,” his mother said, composedly. “And as for speaking so, I have no wish to speak so. I think she’s a very nice little girl, for St. Rule’s; you could never take her into society, but for St. Rule’s she would do very well.”
“Then, mother,” said Frank, “you understand me, for you make me speak very plain. We’ve got a good house here, and we’re rich enough to be about the first people in the place; and I wish to settle in St. Rule’s.”
“My poor boy,” cried Mrs. Mowbray, “rich, oh, my poor boy!”
And here, without any warning, she suddenly burst into a torrent of tears. This was, perhaps, a proceeding to which her son was not wholly unaccustomed; for he maintained, to a certain extent, his equanimity. He walked up and down the room, striking the backs of the chairs with a paper-knife he held in his hand for some seconds. And then he came back to her, and asked, with a little impatience:
“Why am I a poor boy? and why is it so wonderful that we should be rich? I am—I suppose we are rich—more or less—able at all events to take our place among the best people in St. Rule’s.” He laughed, and went on striking his little ivory toy against the chairs sharply. “It isn’t so great a brag, after all,” he said, laughing, “among the best people in St. Rule’s.”