"That young gentleman," said Madame, following the direction of the other's eyes. "Distingué! What joy to have one so fine son!"
Mrs. Jordan smiled her gratification and could not help glancing across at Mrs. Martindale, whose daughter's depreciation of the paragon must have ruffled her maternal plumage not a little.
"Yes," she said, "he is a dear boy--so manly and yet so affectionate," and her eyes drooped, and her voice fell, as it will when one talks of something near the heart; and there were signs--woman of the world though she was--of her maundering on upon the same sweet theme, if only there were an attentive silence.
But this Mrs. Martha's patience could not yield. She saw nothing so remarkable in the Jordan boy "for that affected French woman to make a fuss about. If it had been her Gerald now, there might have been some sense in it--with his delicate fair skin like a girl's, and his sturdy broad shoulders. It was true young Jordan had the advantage in height; but what matters half an inch? And as to the manliness----" And again she seemed to be standing in an upper window of her town house, securely hid behind a curtain, looking down on the two boys in a tussle. How her boy tumbled the other over, let him get up and knocked him down again, and pummelled him till he had had enough. And she? Had she been a right-minded person--taken in the abstract--of course she would have interfered; but being only a woman and a mother, and seeing it was her side which played the winning game, she merely stood and looked on. Lady lecturers and authors often tell us of the higher moral plane from which the gentle sex surveys the world's affairs, but for honest old-world delight in sheer physical force and muscular prowess, can a woman be equalled? It must be a survival from the days of savagery and marriage by capture. The learned professor's wife may expect to be led out to dinner before plain mistress, but as likely as not she is innocent of even a smattering of the "ology" on which her husband's reputation is built; but she whom good fortune has wed to a Victoria Cross knows every detail of his achievements and believes herself married to a demigod.
But this is digression. It seemed to Martha that Amelia was about to moralize aloud upon her boy, and having a kindness for her and being unwilling that she should make herself absurd, she broke the momentary silence with
"And really. Miss Matildy now"--Martha was a lady 'Noo Hampshire'--"doo tell! Have you taught the child her letters and pothooks and some of the multiplication table all by yourself; and you not married? Well, now, I call it real smart--you might almost do for a school marm. That you might, with just taking pains--at least, if you, had begun earlier."
Ralph was standing within earshot, and it is not unlikely that he wished his wife had not spoken. She was a good soul, he well knew. She had been a beauty, and once there had seemed a quaint charm in the direct and high-pitched utterances which stole from between those coral lips. But that was years ago. The lips were withered now; it was on account of her poor health they had come to live at St. Euphrase, and only the unusual and impolite utterances remained to wound the sensibilities of polished ears--now, too, when he had become rich, and he could buy her whatever she wanted, and would have bought her some conventional refinement as gladly as her diamonds from Tiffany's. It was Matilda, however, who replied in support of her own achievements.
"Letters and pothooks, my dear Mrs. Herkimer? Muriel can read the newspapers and even 'Paradise Lost' perfectly well. She reads me to sleep every Sunday afternoon with 'Paradise Lost' or Young's 'Night Thoughts.' I think poetry is improving for the child, you know, and I enjoy it myself. It soothes me. And, by-the-way, it was she who wrote asking you to come here to-day."
"Well now! You don't----" ejaculated Martha; but Matilda, though mollified, ran on: "Indeed, I believe I have gained quite as much as Muriel by her lessons. One must know a thing in order to teach it. I found my own education had grown sadly rusty, and needed brushing up. I had no idea there was so much interesting information to be got from 'Mangnall's Questions' and 'The Child's History of England' till I went over them with Muriel. As to music, I used to play, but was getting out of practice; she has revived my interest in it, and now we both play and sing together--in a mild way, my dear Amelia; pray do not look apprehensive, I am not meditating an exhibition. But I was going to say, I think Muriel needs better teaching than mine, now; so we propose going to Montreal for the winter. I cannot teach languages, and her voice seems worth cultivating."
"Take her to Selby, Miss Matildy," cried the worthy Martha, little dreaming how her husband and his aunt wished her a lockjaw. "He is married to a sister of Judy's there--plays the organ at St. Wittikind's--does it beautiful, my dear, but you will have heard him--and if there is any sing in the child it is he will bring it out. He'd make the kettle sing."