merits were rather in the line of the”—­and Mr. Striker waved his hand with a series of fantastic flourishes in the air—­“of the light ornamental!” Mr. Striker bore his recalcitrant pupil a grudge, but he was evidently trying both to be fair and to respect the susceptibilities of his companions.  But he was unversed in the mysterious processes of feminine emotion.  Ten minutes before, there had been a general harmony of sombre views; but on hearing Roderick’s limitations thus distinctly formulated to a stranger, the two ladies mutely protested.  Mrs. Hudson uttered a short, faint sigh, and Miss Garland raised her eyes toward their advocate and visited him with a short, cold glance.

“I ’m afraid, Mrs. Hudson,” Rowland pursued, evading the discussion of Roderick’s possible greatness, “that you don’t at all thank me for stirring up your son’s ambition on a line which leads him so far from home.  I suspect I have made you my enemy.”

Mrs. Hudson covered her mouth with her finger-tips and looked painfully perplexed between the desire to confess the truth and the fear of being impolite.  “My cousin is no one’s enemy,” Miss Garland hereupon declared, gently, but with that same fine deliberateness with which she had made Rowland relax his grasp of the chair.

“Does she leave that to you?” Rowland ventured to ask, with a smile.

“We are inspired with none but Christian sentiments,” said Mr. Striker; “Miss Garland perhaps most of all.  Miss Garland,” and Mr. Striker waved his hand again as if to perform an introduction which had been regrettably omitted, “is the daughter of a minister, the granddaughter of a minister, the sister of a minister.”  Rowland bowed deferentially, and the young girl went on with her sewing, with nothing, apparently, either of embarrassment or elation at the promulgation of these facts.  Mr. Striker continued:  “Mrs. Hudson, I see, is too deeply agitated to converse with you freely.  She will allow me to address you a few questions.  Would you kindly inform her, as exactly as possible, just what you propose to do with her son?”

The poor lady fixed her eyes appealingly on Rowland’s face and seemed to say that Mr. Striker had spoken her desire, though she herself would have expressed it less defiantly.  But Rowland saw in Mr. Striker’s many-wrinkled light blue eye, shrewd at once and good-natured, that he had no intention of defiance, and that he was simply pompous and conceited and sarcastically compassionate of any view of things in which Roderick Hudson was regarded in a serious light.

“Do, my dear madam?” demanded Rowland.  “I don’t propose to do anything.  He must do for himself.  I simply offer him the chance.  He ’s to study, to work—­hard, I hope.”

“Not too hard, please,” murmured Mrs. Hudson, pleadingly, wheeling about from recent visions of dangerous leisure.  “He ’s not very strong, and I ’m afraid the climate of Europe is very relaxing.”