And now, what people call the anxious years were gone, and she had kept her boy.
Yet the tears which she did not mean to shed were, in part, for him. She knew better than most mothers seem to understand that there were still "anxious years" to be lived through.
They had lingered over the breakfast table that morning, discussing certain questions that had been discussed before.
"Mamma," the boy had said as he served her to fruit, "how came you to have pronounced ideas about all sorts of things? Were you always so?"
His mother laughed genially.
"What a definite question for a lawyer to ask!" for Erskine had already announced his intention of being a lawyer like his father and grandfather.
"What 'things' are supposed to be under consideration?"
He echoed her laugh.
"I was thinking aloud then," he said. "It often seems to me as though you and I knew each other's thoughts. But just now I am thinking of one of our argumentative subjects. In spite of the horror in which you have brought me up of those bits of pasteboard called cards, I find that I cannot feel precisely as you would like to have me, concerning them. I used to. As a child nobody could be fiercer than I in their denunciation; but I find that that was merely a reflex influence, and not judgment. In spite of me nowadays they look meek and harmless; and I was wondering how you and they came to be in such fierce antagonism. Was my father of that mind?"
"Am I fierce, Erskine?"