'Well—both,' said Mrs. Dallas, again applying her knitting-needle under her cap.
The younger lady was silent a few minutes; going on with her embroidery.
'This is getting to be very interesting,' she remarked.
'It is very interesting to me,' replied the mother, with a thoughtful look. 'For, as I told you, Pitt is a very fast friend, and persistent in all his likings and dislikings. Here he had none but the company of dissenters; and I did not want him to get in with people of that persuasion.'
'Is there much society about here? I fancied not.'
'No society, for him. Country people—farmers—people of that stamp.
Nothing else.'
'I should have thought, dear Mrs. Dallas, that you would have been quite a sufficient counteraction to temptation from such a source?'
Mrs. Dallas hesitated. 'Boys will be boys,' she said.
'But he is not a boy now?'
'He is twenty-four.'