“Don’t you waste any money on Fanny’s education,” retorted Archibald, “because it isn’t worth it.  What we ought to do is to get to work and let you take a rest.  The first money I make, I’m going to spend on giving you pretty clothes and a rest.”

“I don’t want to rest, dear,” replied Gabriella, with a laugh.  “I’m not an old lady yet, you silly boy.”  How ridiculous it was that he always spoke of her work as if it were a hardship—­a burden from which she must be released at the first opportunity.  That was so like Cousin Jimmy, a survival, she supposed, from the tradition of the South.  Unlike Fanny, whose horizon was bounded by her personal inclinations, Archibald seemed never to think of himself, never to put either his comfort or his career before his love for his mother.  To attempt to shape Fanny’s character was like working in tissue paper, but there was stout substance in Archibald.  Gabriella had tried hard—­she told herself over and over again that she had tried as hard as she could—­with both of her children; and with one of them at least she felt that she had succeeded.  There was, she knew, the making of a splendid man in her son; and his very ugliness, which had been so noticeable when he was a child, was developing now into attractiveness.  For it was the ugliness of strength, not of weakness, and there was no trace in his nature of the self-indulgence which had ruined his father.

“But I don’t want to go to college, mother dear,” protested Fanny, who always addressed Gabriella as “dear” when she was about to become intractable; “I want to go on the stage.”

“You are not to see another play, except when I take you, for a whole year.  Remember what I tell you, Fanny!” replied Gabriella sternly.  Not Mrs. Carr herself, not Cousin Becky Bollingbroke, of sanctified memory, could have regarded an actress’s career with greater horror than did the advanced and independent Gabriella.  Any career, indeed, appeared to her to be out of the question for Fanny (a girl who couldn’t even get on a street car without being spoken to), and of all careers the one the stage afforded was certainly the last she would have selected for her daughter.

“I’ll remember,” responded Fanny coolly, and Gabriella knew in her heart that the girl would disobey her at the first opportunity.  It was impossible to chaperon her every minute, and Fanny, unchaperoned, was, in the realistic phrase of her brother, “looking for trouble.”

“I’ll send her to boarding-school next year,” Gabriella determined; and she reflected gloomily that with Fanny and, Archibald both away, she might as well be a bachelor woman.

“Well, children, you’re both going away next winter,” she said positively.  “I can’t look after you, Fanny, and make your living at the same time, so I shall send you to boarding-school.  What do you say to Miss Bradfordine’s?”

“That’s up on the Hudson, mother.  I don’t want to go out of New York.”  Fanny was genuinely alarmed at last.