“You know, Max,” she said, coming over to his chair and putting an affectionate hand on his head, “that your father has only spoken to you as he has done because he wanted to rouse up your spirit and make you ashamed of being lazy.”

Max rose from his chair and turned to her with flashing eyes.

“And now, when there is a chance of my rousing myself at last, when I am ready and anxious to prove it, and to set to work, and to settle down, he is angrier with me than ever.  Mother, you know I’m right, and you know it isn’t fair.”

Mrs. Wedmore looked with something like terror into her son’s handsome, excited face.

“But, my dear boy, don’t you see that this would be ruin, to tie yourself to a girl like that?  Why, she told me herself that she didn’t belong to anywhere or anybody.”

“And is that any reason why she should never belong to anywhere or to anybody?  If there was anything wrong about the girl herself, I would listen to you—­”

“Listen to us!  You’ll have to listen!” interrupted his father.

Max glanced at him, and went on: 

“But there is not.”

“And how do you know that?  How long have you known her?”

Max was taken aback.  It had not occurred to him to think how short his acquaintance with Carrie had been.

“Long enough to find out all about her,” he answered, soberly; “and to make up my mind that I’ll have her for my wife.”

“Then that settles it,” broke in Mr. Wedmore, whose ill-humor had not been decreased by the fact that Max evidently considered it more important to conciliate his mother than to try to convince him.  “You will go to the Cape next month; and if you choose to take this baggage with you, you can do so.  It won’t much matter to us what sort of a wife you introduce to your neighbors out there.”

But Max strode across the room and stood face to face with his father, eye to eye.

“No, sir,” he said, in a dogged tone of voice, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets and looking at him steadily.  “I shall not go to the Cape.  You have a right to turn me out of your house if you please.  In fact, it’s quite time I went, I know.  It’s time I did settle down.  It’s time I did try to do something for myself.  And I’m going to.  I’m going to try to earn my own living and to make enough to keep a wife—­the wife I want.  And I shall do it somehow.  But I’m not going to be packed off to Africa, as if my marrying this girl were a thing to be ashamed of.  I’m going to stay in England.  I sha’n’t come near you.  You needn’t be afraid of that.  I shall be too proud of my wife to bring her among people who would look down upon her.  And perhaps you’d better not inquire where I live or what I’m doing, for we sha’n’t be able to live in a fashionable neighborhood, nor to be too particular about what we turn our hands to.”

While Max made this speech very slowly, very deliberately, his father listened to him with ever-increasing anger and disgust, and his mother, not daring to come too close while he was right under the paternal eye, hung over the table in the background, with yearning, tremulous love in her eyes, and with her lips parted, ready to utter the tender words of a pleading peacemaker.