“Oh! my dear!” said the Doctor. “She didn’t ask it of me, I offered it to her.”
“I cannot bear him,” declared Mrs. Cary, with the tone of one who delivers a convincing argument. “And the son is more intolerable than the father. It requires all my politeness to prevent my asking him out of the house whenever he comes. He comes here entirely too often.”
“My dear, he is a young doctor who is trying to practise his profession, and needs advice,” expostulated the old doctor, but Mrs. Cary was not to be convinced.
“A young doctor, indeed! a young—” The rest of the sentence was lost as she went out with her head in the air.
When the matter of removing Jacquelin was broached to him, a new and unexpected difficulty arose. He refused to go. The idea of his getting better treatment than Dr. Cary was able to give was, he said, all nonsense, and they could not stand the expense of such a plan as was proposed. In this emergency his mother was forced to bow her pride. She summoned Blair Cary as an ally. Blair yielded so far as to add an expression of her views to the mother’s, because she did not know how to refuse; but, with a woman’s finesse, she kept herself within limitations, which Jacquelin, at least, would understand. She came over on a visit, and went in to see him, and took occasion to say that she thought he ought to go to the city. It was a very prim and stiff little speech that she made. Jacquelin’s face showed the first tinge of color that had been on it for months, as he turned his eyes to her almost eagerly. So impassive, though, was she, that the tinge faded out.
“Do you ask me to go?”
“No—I have nothing to do with it. I only think you ought to do what your mother wishes.” The mouth was closer than usual. There was a little deeper color in her face now.
“Oh! it was only a moral idea you wished to inculcate?”
“If you choose to call it so.” The mouth drew closer.
“Well—will you ask me?”