“Oh!”
“But John,” said Mrs. Gregory, “met his responsibility like a Mayrant.”
“Whatever temptations he has yielded to,” said Mrs. Weguelin, “his filial piety has stood proof.”
“He refused,” added Mrs. Gregory, “when George (and I have never understood how George could be so forgetful of their mother) wrote twice, offering him a lucrative and rising position in the railroad company at Roanoke.”
“That was hard!” I exclaimed.
She totally misapplied my sympathy. “Oh, Anna Mayrant,” she corrected herself, “John’s mother, Mrs. Hector Mayrant, had harder things than forgetful sons to bear! I’ve not laid eyes on those boys since the funeral.”
“Nearly two years,” murmured Mrs. Weguelin. And then, to me, with something that was almost like a strange severity beneath her gentle tone: “Therefore we are proud of John, because the better traits in his nature remind us of his forefathers, whom we knew.”
“In Kings Port,” said Mrs. Gregory, “we prize those who ring true to the blood.”
By way of response to this sentiment, I quoted some French to her. “Bon chien chasse de race.”
It pleased Mrs. Weguelin. Her guarded attitude toward me relented. “John mentioned your cultivation to us,” she said. “In these tumble-down days it is rare to meet with one who still lives, mentally, on the gentlefolks’ plane—the piano nobile of intelligence!”