lost sight of her; but I had liked her of old, she had been a good friend to my sisters, and I had in regard to her that sense which is pleasant to those who in general have gone astray or got detached, the sense that she at least knew all about me.  I could trust her at any time to tell people I was respectable.  Perhaps I was conscious of how little I deserved this indulgence when it came over me that I hadn’t been near her for ages.  The measure of that neglect was given by my vagueness of mind about Jasper.  However, I really belonged nowadays to a different generation; I was more the mother’s contemporary than the son’s.

Mrs. Nettlepoint was at home:  I found her in her back drawing-room, where the wide windows opened to the water.  The room was dusky—­it was too hot for lamps—­and she sat slowly moving her fan and looking out on the little arm of the sea which is so pretty at night, reflecting the lights of Cambridgeport and Charlestown.  I supposed she was musing on the loved ones she was to leave behind, her married daughters, her grandchildren; but she struck a note more specifically Bostonian as she said to me, pointing with her fan to the Back Bay:  “I shall see nothing more charming than that over there, you know!” She made me very welcome, but her son had told her about the Patagonia, for which she was sorry, as this would mean a longer voyage.  She was a poor creature in any boat and mainly confined to her cabin even in weather extravagantly termed fine—­as if any weather could be fine at sea.

“Ah then your son’s going with you?” I asked.

“Here he comes, he’ll tell you for himself much better than I can pretend to.”  Jasper Nettlepoint at that moment joined us, dressed in white flannel and carrying a large fan.  “Well, my dear, have you decided?” his mother continued with no scant irony.  “He hasn’t yet made up his mind, and we sail at ten o’clock!”

“What does it matter when my things are put up?” the young man said.  “There’s no crowd at this moment; there will be cabins to spare.  I’m waiting for a telegram—­that will settle it.  I just walked up to the club to see if it was come—­they’ll send it there because they suppose this house unoccupied.  Not yet, but I shall go back in twenty minutes.”

“Mercy, how you rush about in this temperature!” the poor lady exclaimed while I reflected that it was perhaps his billiard-balls I had heard ten minutes before.  I was sure he was fond of billiards.

“Rush? not in the least.  I take it uncommon easy.”

“Ah I’m bound to say you do!” Mrs. Nettlepoint returned with inconsequence.  I guessed at a certain tension between the pair and a want of consideration on the young man’s part, arising perhaps from selfishness.  His mother was nervous, in suspense, wanting to be at rest as to whether she should have his company on the voyage or be obliged to struggle alone.  But as he stood there smiling