“Be prudent,” he replied.  “I am not so rich as people think me.  Although the Locke Morgeson was insured, she was a loss.  But you need not speak of this to your mother.  I never worry her with my business cares.  As for Veronica, she has not the least idea of the value of money, or care for what it represents.”

When we went into the shops, I found him disposed to be more extravagant than I was.  I bought a blue and white carpet; a piece of blue and white flowered chintz; two stuffed chairs, covered with hair-cloth (father remonstrated against these), and a long mirror to go between the windows, astonishing him with my vanity.  What I wanted besides I could construct myself, with the help of the cabinet maker in Surrey.

In one of the shops I heard a familiar voice, which gave me a thrill of anger.  I turned and saw Charlotte Alden, of Barmouth, the girl who had given me the fall on the tilt.  She could not control an expression of surprise at the sight of the well-dressed woman before her.  It was my dress that astonished her.  Where could I have obtained style?

“Miss Alden, how do you do?  Pray tell me whether you have collected any correct legends respecting my mother’s early history.  And do you tilt off little girls nowadays?”

She made no reply, and I left her standing where she was when I began speaking.  When we got out of town, my anger cooled, and I grew ashamed of my spitefulness, and by way of penance I related the affair to father.  He laughed at what I said to her, and told me that he had long known her family.  Charlotte’s uncle had paid his addresses to mother.  There might have been an engagement; whether there was or not, the influence of his family had broken the acquaintance.  This explained what Charlotte said to me in Miss Black’s school about mother’s being in love.

“You might have been angry with the girl, but you should not have felt hurt at the fact implied.  Are you so young still as to believe that only those who love marry? or that those who marry have never loved, except each other?”

“I have thought of these things; but I am afraid that Love, like Theology, if examined, makes one skeptical.”

We jogged along in silence for a mile or two.

“Whether every man’s children overpower him, I wonder?  I am positively afraid of you and Veronica.”

“What do you mean?”

“I am always unprepared for the demonstrations of character you and she make.  My traditional estimate, which comes from thoughtfulness, or the putting off of responsibility, or God knows what, I find will not answer.  I have been on my guard against that which everyday life might present—­a lie, a theft, or a meanness; but of the undercurrent, which really bears you on, I have known nothing.”

“If you happen to dive below the surface, and find the roots of our actions which are fixed beneath its tide—­what then?  Must you lament over us?”