"Yes, of course.—No, Bridgeport, isn't it?—What, don't we, any more?... But you are on my side, in the main, aren't you?"
"Conditionally, yes—that is, if all parties seem agreeable. The one thing I won't stand for is—well, Babes in the Wood business."
"James, what do you think of my taking Harry off to England with me?" said Aunt Miriam to her elder nephew a day or two later.
"I think it would be fine," was his reply, and then after a pause: "For how long, though?"
This was going nearer to the heart of the matter than the lady cared to penetrate, so she merely answered:
"Oh, one can't tell; a few months; perhaps more, if he wants to stay." Seeing that he swallowed this without apparent effort, she went on: "What should you say to his going to school in England, when he is able, for a time?"
James' expression underwent no change, but he only answered stiffly, "I think he had better come to St. Barnabas, when he is able," and his aunt let the matter drop there.
It was in Aunt Cecilia, and not Aunt Selina, that Lady Fletcher found the most formidable opposition. Miss Wimbourne, indeed, quite took to the idea when her half-sister, very carefully and with not a little concealed trepidation, suggested it to her. She took it, as Miriam more vividly put it to her brother, "like milk."
"That is not a bad plan, Miriam, not a bad plan at all," she said in the quiet voice that could be so firm when it wanted. "I can see why there are good reasons why neither of the boys should live in New Haven. For the present, you know. James will be at school, and will spend his vacations with James' family, and Harry will be with you until he is ready to do the same. I do not see but what it is a very good arrangement. I am perfectly willing to do my part in taking care of them, but I am not nearly so useful in that way as either you or James."
But not so with Mrs. James. Her husband first spoke to her of the scheme before breakfast on the Monday morning, and she took immediate and articulate exception to it. The plan was forced, dangerous, artificial, cruel, unnecessary, short-sighted; in fact, it wouldn't do at all. There was no telling what Miriam would do with him, once he was over there, and no telling when she would let him come back to what had been, what ought to be, and what, if she (Mrs. James) had any say in the matter, was going to be his Home. It would make her extremely unhappy to think of that child spending his vacations—or his whole time for that matter—with any one but his uncle and natural guardian ("Miriam is his guardian, too," James attempted to say, but no attention was paid to him), his aunt and his young cousins. As for all that business about Giles Fletcher, it was Perfect Nonsense. Before she would give an instant's consideration to such—to such an absurdity, she (Mrs. James) would give the boy every scrap of money she had, or was ever going to have, outright, and would end the matter then and there. (This would have been a really appalling threat, if it was meant seriously, for Cecilia was due to inherit millions.) As for sending him to an English public school, she thought it would be the cruelest, most unfeeling, most ridiculous thing possible, seeing Harry was what he was. If it had been James, now—!