When Notely was puzzled or provoked he felt for the pipe in his pocket, just like old Captain Pharo, laughed, and came straight again.
"Why, mother! you were a Basin girl yourself—the 'Beauty of the Basins,'" he said, with soft pride—he knew no better—and smiled as though he saw another face.
"Are you foolish?" said his mother, giving way sharply.
When one has come from such degree, has sought above all earthly good, and earned, a social eminence such as Mrs. Garrison had attained, it will leave some unbending lines on lip and brow; the eyes will not melt easily, although it wrings one's heart to find that one's only child is, after all, an ingrained Basin; yet their features were the same, only Notely's were simple, expressive Basin eyes—hers had become elevated.
"You! who have in you such success, if you only would!" she cried.
"'Success,' I'm afraid, mother," said Notely, with one of those sighs that was like a wayward note on his violin; "it 's a diviner thing, however, you know, to have in you the capacity for failure."
"You are as remarkable a mixture of barbarism and sentiment as your shanty," sneered Mrs. Garrison, looking about. "Do you speak in the Basin 'meetings'?"
"No," said Notely. "I ought to. Think of what I have had, and their deprivations. But there 's always something comes up so d—d funny!"
Mrs. Garrison smiled sympathetically now. "O Notely, think of the Langhams, and Grace even willing to show her preference for you, decorously, of course, but we all know."
Notely grabbed his pipe hard and shook his head.