His mother did not say it, or anything more, then. Late at night she came to him. “Are you asleep, Philip?”
“Asleep? I!”
“I didn’t suppose you were. But I have had a note to-day which I must answer. Mrs. Andrews has asked us to dinner on Saturday. Philip, if you could see that sweet girl as I do, in all her goodness and sincerity—”
“I think I do, mother. And I wouldn’t be guilty of her unhappiness for the world. You must decline.”
“Well, perhaps you are right.” Mrs. Verrian went away, softly, sighing. As she sealed her reply to Mrs. Andrews, she sighed again, and made the reflection which a mother seldom makes with regard to her son, before his marriage, that men do not love women for their goodness.
PG EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:
Almost incomparably ignorant woman
Almost to die of hunger for something to happen
Belief of immortality—without one jot of evidence
Brave in the right time and place
Continuity becomes the instinctive expectation
Found her too frankly disputatious
Girls who were putting on the world as hard as they could
If there’s wrong done the penalty doesn’t right it
Never wanted a holiday so much as the day after you had one
Personal view of all things and all persons which women take
Proof against the stupidest praise
Read too many stories to care for the plot
She laughed too much and too loud
Sick people are terribly, egotistical
The fad that fails is extinguished forever
Timidity is at the bottom of all fondness for secrecy