“What do you mean?” I asked, in consternation.

“From every natural portent, I think that horrid infant in arms was, when I left New York, about to cast his handkerchief or rattle toward Peggy again.  I’m morally certain that he and all his odious emotional disturbances will be presenting themselves for her consideration in Eastridge before long; and, since they strike me as quite too odious for the nicest girl in the world, I hope, before they reach here, she’ll be far away—­absolutely out of reach.”

“I hope so, too.”  But as I said it, for the first time there came around me, like a blank, rising mist, the prospect of a journey farther and a longer separation than any I had before imagined between us.

“I knew you’d think so.  That was, partly, why I acted as I did, for her, dear mother”—­he leaned forward a little toward me and took up one end of the ruffle I was stitching again to cover my excitement—­“and for Lorraine and for me, in engaging our passage abroad.”

He seemed not to expect me to speak at once, but after a little quiet pause, while we both sat thinking, went on, with great gentleness:  “You know it’s about our only way of really protecting her from any annoyance here, even that of thoughts of her own she doesn’t like.  There will be so very wonderfully much for her to see, and I believe she’ll enjoy it.  One of Lorraine’s younger sisters is coming to be with us, perhaps, for a while in Switzerland—­and the Elliots—­animal sculptors.  You remember them, don’t you, and Arlington—­studying decorative design that winter when you were in New York?  They’ll be abroad this summer.  I believe we’ll all have a very charming, care-free time walking and sketching and working—­a time really so much more charming for a lovely and sensible young woman than sitting in a talking town subject to the incursions of a lover she doesn’t truly like.”  He stopped a moment before he added, sincerely:  “Then—­it isn’t simply for her that this way would be better, mother, but for me, for every one.”

“For you and for every one?” I managed to make myself ask with tranquillity.

“Yes.  Why wouldn’t this relieve immensely all the sufferers from my commercial career at the factory?  Don’t you think that’s somewhat unjust, not simply to Maria’s and Tom’s requirements for the family standing and fortunes”—­he laughed a moment—­“but to father’s need there of a right-hand business man?” That was his way of putting it.  “For a long time,” he pursued, more earnestly than I’ve ever heard him speak before in his life, “I’ve been planning, mother, to go away to study and to sketch.  I’m doing nothing here.  Maybe what I would do away from here might not seem to you so wonderful.  But it would have one dignity—­whatever else it were or were not, it would be my own.”