"Where have you been, Frances? It is a week since I saw you.""Oh, everywhere! George has been showing me London!"She sat down before the fire with a gurgle of comfort and dropped her bonnet and gloves on the floor beside her. "Yesterday we spent at the Museum. George explained the Elgin marbles to me. I don't suppose any body in London has studied their history so thoroughly.
I did wish you could have heard him. And the day before I was at the House--in the ladies' gallery. I can't imagine how he got admission for me. He IS so clever!""We are going down to Canterbury for a couple of days,"said Clara. "We start at noon. Will you go with us?""No, I think not. George does not seem to care for cathedrals. And he has plans for me, no doubt."Miss Vance brushed the bonnet and carefully rolled up the strings. "Are you satisfied? Is London the London you have been thinking of these twenty years?" she asked.
"Oh, a thousand times more! And George has been with me every day--every day!"Miss Vance picked up the gloves, looking impatiently at the poor lady's happy face. "Now she has gone off into one of her silly transports of delight, and for no earthly reason!""I noticed that George has seen very little of Lisa lately," she said tentatively. "If he really means to marry her----""Marry her! Clara! You surely never feared THAT?""He certainly told us plainly enough that he would do it," said Miss Vance testily.
"Oh, you don't understand him! You have had so little to do with young men. They are all liable to attacks like that--as to measles and scarlet fever. But they pass off. Now, George is not as susceptible as most of them.
But," lowering her voice, "he was madly in love with the butcher's Kate when he was ten, and five years afterward offered to marry the widow Potts. I thought he had outgrown the disease. There has been nothing of the kind since, until this fancy. It is passing off. Of course it is mortifying enough to think that such a poor creature as that could attract him for an hour.""I was to blame," Miss Vance said, with an effort. "Ibrought her in his way. But how was I to know that she was such a cat, and he such---- If he should marry her----"Mrs. Waldeaux laughed angrily. "You are too absurd, Clara. A flirtation with such a woman was degrading enough, but George is not quite mad. He has not even spoken of her for days. Oh, here he comes! That is his step on the stairs." She ran to the door. "He found that I was out and has followed me. He is the most ridiculous mother's boy! Well, George, here I am! Have you thought of some thing new for me to see?" She glanced at Miss Vance, well pleased that she should see the lad's foolish fondness for her.
George forced a smile. He looked worn and jaded. Miss Vance noticed that his usually neat cravat was awry and his hands were gloveless. "Yes," he said. "It is a lit-tle church. The oldest in London. I want to show it to you."Miss Vance tied on Mrs. Waldeaux's bonnet, smoothing her hair affectionately. "There are too many gray hairs here for your age, Frances," she said. "George, you should keep your mother from worry and work. Don't let her hair grow gray so soon."George bowed. "I hope I shall do my duty," he said, with dignity. "Come, mother."As they drove down Piccadilly Mrs. Waldeaux chattered eagerly to her son. She could not pour out her teeming fancies about this new world to any body else, but she could not talk fast enough to him. Had they not both been waiting for a lifetime to see this London?
"The thing," she said earnestly, as she settled herself beside him, "the thing that has impressed me most, Ithink, were those great Ninevite gods yesterday. I sat for hours before them while you were gone. There they sit, their hands on their knees, and stare out of their awful silence at the London fog, just as they stared at the desert before Christ was born. I felt so miserably young and sham!"George adjusted his cravat impatiently. "I'm afraid Idon't quite follow you, mother. These little flights of yours---- They belong to your generation, I suppose. It was a more sentimental one than mine. You are not very young. And you certainly are not a sham. The statues are interesting, but I fail to see why they should have had such an effect upon you.""Oh!" said Frances. "But you did not stay alone with them as long as I did, or you would have felt it too.
