"Really, Erskine, you are strangely obtuse! I have explained at least three times that mother spent the afternoon in her room, and that I gave orders that she should not be disturbed. I thought I should be commended for it instead of blamed."
"I haven't had a thought of blaming you, Irene, but I am a trifle anxious about my mother, and what you say only increases the anxiety. She has never been given to sleeping much in the daytime."
"Oh what nonsense! as though you knew what she did all day, while you are in town! Of course she sleeps; old people always do."
[Illustration: "MY MOTHER ISN'T OLD, IRENE."--_Page 167._]
"Why not, I wonder? you ridiculous boy! When should people begin to be called old, pray, if not at fifty? And she is more than that. She is within a few years of Auntie's age, and you thought she was an old woman, and were always preaching to me about how patient I must be with her on that account."
Her husband gave her a troubled, half-startled look. His mother nearly as old as the invalid aunt who had seemed to him old enough to be his grandmother!
"Sure of what, my beloved dunce? That your mother is fifty-three? Of course I am. It was only a few days ago that she showed me her gold-lined silver cup, that has the imprint of her first teeth and is dated for her first birthday."
"And I'll tell you another way in which I know it, Erskine. She is growing nervous and over-sensitive, as old people always do. I can see a great difference in her, even in the short time that I have been here. It is nothing to worry about, of course; simply something to be expected as among the infirmities of age. You ought to have married me six or eight years before you did; it would have been easier for her. She simply cannot get used to your having a wife. 'My son' has 'lived and breathed and had his being' so many years for her sake alone, that to share him with another is a bitter experience. She doesn't love me one bit, Erskine, and it is not my fault. If I were an angel from heaven, it wouldn't make any difference, provided I had presumed to marry you. It makes it hard for both of us; and for that very reason it would be much better if you and I were in a little house of our own. She would get used to it much easier if she did not have me continually before her eyes."