George was fond and proud of his childish little mother. He had never known any body, he thought, so young or so transparent. It was easily understood. She had married at sixteen, and had been left a widow little more than a year afterward. "And I," he used to think, "was born with an old head on my shoulders; so we have grown up together. I suppose the dear soul never had a thought in her life which she has not told me."
As they sat together a steward brought Mrs. Waldeaux a note, which she read, blushing and smiling.
"The captain invites us to sit at his table," she said, when the man was gone.
"Very proper in the captain," said George complacently. "You see, Madam Waldeaux, even the men who go down in ships have heard of you and your family!"
"I don't believe the captain ever heard of me," she said, after a grave consideration, "nor of the Waldeaux. It is much more likely that he has read your article in the Quarterly, George."
"Nonsense!" But he stiffened himself up consciously.
He had sent a paper on some abstruse point of sociology to the Quarterly last spring, and it had aroused quite a little buzz of criticism. His mother had regarded it very much as the Duchess of Kent did the crown when it was set upon her little girl's head. She always had known that her child was born to reign, but it was satisfactory to see this visible sign of it.
She whispered now, eagerly leaning over to him. "There was something about that paper which I never told you. I think I'll tell you now that the great day has come."
"Well?"
"Why, you know—I never think of you as my son, or a man, or anything outside of me—not at all. You are just ME, doing the things I should have done if I had not been a woman. Well,"—she drew her breath quickly,—"when I was a girl it seemed as if there was something in me that I must say, so I tried to write poems. No, I never told you before. It had counted for so much to me I could not talk of it. I always sent them to the paper anonymously, signed 'Sidney.' Oh, it was long—long ago! I've been dumb, as you might say, for years. But when I read your article, George—do you know if I had written it I should have used just the phrases you did? And you signed it 'Sidney'!" She watched him breathlessly. "That was more than a coincidence, don't you think? I AM dumb, but you speak for me now. It is because we are just one. Don't you think so, George?" She held his arm tightly.