“I should like to have seen her,” said Evans, laughing back in his chair.
“She was worth seeing as a survival of the superficial fermentation of the period of our social history when it was believed that women could be like men if they chose, and ought to be if they ever meant to show their natural superiority. But she was not picturesque.”
“The son's very handsome. I can see that the lady boarders think him so.”
“Do you find him at all remarkable otherwise? What dismayed me more than his poetry even was that when he gave that up he seemed to have no particular direction.”
“Oh, he reads a good deal, and pretty serious books; and he goes to hear all the sermons and lectures in town.”
“I thought he came to mine only,” sighed the minister, with, a retrospective suffering. “Well, what can be done for him now? I feel my complicity with Barker as poignantly as you could wish.”
“Ah, you see how the principle applies everywhere!” cried the editor joyously. He added: “But I really think that for the present you can't do better than let Barker alone. He's getting on very well at Mrs. Harmon's, and although the conditions at the St. Albans are more transitory than most sublunary things, Barker appears to be a fixture. Our little system has begun to revolve round him unconsciously; he keeps us going.”
“Well,” said Sewell, consenting to be a little comforted. He was about to go more particularly into the facts; but Mrs. Sewell came in just then, and he obviously left the subject.
Evans did not sit down again after rising to greet her; and presently he said good night.
She turned to her husband: “What were you talking about when I came in?”