"You woke up the wrong chap that time, didn't you, mother?" he said. "It was as good as a play to hear him go on and to watch your face. I haven't enjoyed anything so much in a long time."
He laughed again over the memory. His mother did not join in the laugh; just then she could not. Those tears that she had managed, not allowing them to fall, had somehow got into her throat. She felt that she should choke if she attempted to speak, and she could not summon at the moment more than the ghost of a smile.
Erskine wheeled back to the piano for a moment, played a few bars of a popular song with one hand, humming it softly; then, in the midst of a line, arose and strolled over to the window where his mother stood.
"Never mind, mommie," he said, bending his tall form low enough to kiss the tip of one ear—a whimsical little caress peculiar to himself. "She mustn't go and look at the clouds and the storm and the dark as though there wasn't any sunshine anywhere. I am not intending to go to the dogs as soon as I go away from home, merely because my mother did her level best all her life to keep me right side up with care; and in my opinion it would be a poor sort of chap who would do any such thing. And I don't feel the need of a social game of cards now and then as a safeguard, either. I don't feel especially 'taut,' mommie, honestly; and I don't care a straw for the Mitchells' card party. Did you really think I cared for it on that account? How absurd! Don't you worry one least little mite, mamma, there is absolutely nothing to be troubled over except that you have a pastor who doesn't know enough to talk a little bit on the side that you want talked, or else keep still. Wasn't it funny?" He laughed once more, then added, a trifle more gravely:—
"When that man is older, he will understand people better, perhaps. Don't you hope so? Shall I read to you, mamma, a little while? I have a delicious book here that I know you will enjoy."
Did he understand, would he ever understand, what a mountain weight he had suddenly lifted from his mother's heart? What a gracious, sweet-spirited, self-sacrificing boy he was! Had there ever been one just like him? She knew he was fond of the Mitchells, and that they were eager to have him with them in their social life; they had brought as much pressure as they could, and he had resisted it for his mother's sake.
It was sweet, but—She could not keep back one little sigh. She was a devoted mother; but she would, oh, so much rather it had been for Christ's sake.
There was an unexpected outcome from that interview with Mr. Conway. In a very short time it became evident that he had lost his hold upon Erskine. Not that the boy turned against him seriously; but he smiled over some of his words and purposely misquoted others in a spirit of mischief. Occasionally there was a curve to the smile that suggested a sneer; and the strongest feeling he evinced for him might be called indifference. In his secret heart Erskine knew that he was being unreasonable, and was really resenting his mother's having been made uncomfortable; but he could not get away from the feeling that Mr. Conway, having been weighed in his mother's balance and found wanting, was not to his mind, however much he himself might differ from her. Of course all this was mere feeling, not principle.
Nevertheless, the clergyman, who prided himself on his influence with young men and who puzzled anxiously over Erskine Burnham's changed attitude which he vaguely felt and could not define, might have been helped if some one had been frank enough to explain the situation. Nobody did. The boy scoffed in secret, assuring himself that a minister who could not be a comfort to a woman and a widow when she tried to lean on him was a "poor sort of chap." As for the mother, she told herself that if she had not been weak and foolish in carrying her anxieties to others, Mr. Conway would not have lost his influence over Erskine; and the minister remained perplexed and anxious; he was sincerely eager to be helpful to young men.
Outwardly they all went on as before. The Mitchells and others of their kind made their card parties and their social dances and their theatre parties and continued to invite eagerly Mrs. Burnham's handsome young son, who cheerfully declined all invitations and stayed with his mother. But he argued no more; in fact he declined to do so, setting the whole matter gayly aside, with a cheerful—