Much too young to be the mother of the elder children, there was still something essentially mother-like in all her ways.  His children, excepting the one asleep in her arms, were all grouped on the floor at her feet.  “Just so Janie would have sat, if she had lived,” he thought.  “I should often have seen something like this here, as the children grew older.”  And while he listened to the account given by the two boys of their doings, he could not help looking at Emily, and thinking, as he had sometimes done before, that she bore, in some slight degree, a resemblance to his wife—­his wife whom he had idealised a good deal lately—­and who generally, in his thought, presented herself to him as she had done when, as a mere lad, he first saw her.  A dark-haired and grey-eyed young woman, older than himself, as a very young man’s first admiration frequently is.  He felt that Emily was more graceful, had a charm of manner and a sweetness of nature that Janie had never possessed.  He seldom allowed himself to admit even to his own mind that his wife had been endowed with very slight powers of loving.  On that occasion, however, the fact was certainly present to his thought; “But,” he cogitated, “we had no quarrels.  A man may sometimes do with but little love from his wife, if he is quite sure she loves no other man more.”

He started from his reverie as Crayshaw ceased to speak.  “I thought you had more sense,” he said, with the smile still on his mouth that had come while he mused on Emily.  “And now don’t flatter yourself that you are to be torn from your friends and hurled on the Continent against your will.  Nothing of the sort, my boy!  You have a more difficult part to play; you are to do as you please.”

Crayshaw’s countenance fell a little.

“Is George really angry, sir?” he asked.

“He did not seem so.  He remarked that you were nearly seventeen, and that he did not specially care about this journey.”

Something very like disappointment stole over Cray’s face then—­something of that feeling which now and then shows us that it is rather a blow to us to have, all on a sudden, what we wanted.  What would we have, then?  We cannot exactly tell; but it seems that was not it.

“Your brother thought you and Johnnie might be with me, and came to ask.  I, of course, felt sure you were here.  If you decide to go with him, you are to be back by six o’clock; if not, you go to Mr. Tikey on Monday.  Now, my boy, I am not going to turn you out-of-doors.  So adieu.”

Thus saying, because Emily’s little charge was awake, and she had risen and was taking leave of the girls, he brought her down-stairs, and, wishing her good-bye’ at his gate, went back to Wigfield, while she returned home.

This young woman, who had been accustomed to reign over most of the men about her, felt, in her newly-learned humility, a sense of elation from merely having been a little while in the presence of the man whom she loved.  She reflected on his musing smile, had no thought that it concerned her, and hoped nothing better than that he might never find out how dear he was to her.