第37章

"I don't know, really," he answered, glancing at her where she sat erect across the table from him, with her hand on the lid of the coffee-pot, and her eyes downcast; it was the face of silent determination not to be put off, which he knew. "I don't suppose you care, mother," he added pleasantly.

"She's nothing to me," she assented. "What's that friend of hers going to do?"

"Which friend?"

"You know. The one that came after you."

"Oh! Dr. Breen. Yes. What did you think of her?"

"I don't see why you call her doctor."

"Oh, I do it out of politeness. Besides, she is one sort of doctor.

Little pills," he added, with an enjoyment of his mother's grimness on this point.

"I should like to see a daughter of mine pretending to be a doctor," said Mrs. Mulbridge.

"Then you would n't like Dr. Breen for a daughter," returned her son, in the same tone as before.

"She wouldn't like me for a mother," Mrs. Mulbridge retorted.

Her son laughed, and helped himself to more baked beans and a fresh slice of rye-and-Indian. He had the homely tastes and the strong digestion of the people from whom he sprung; and be handed his cup to be filled with his mother's strong coffee in easy defiance of consequences. As he took it back from her he said, "I should like to see you and Mrs. Breen together. You would make a strong team." He buttered his bread, with another laugh in appreciation of his conceit. "If you happened to pull the same way. If you did n't, something would break. Mrs. Breen is a lady of powerful convictions. She thinks you ought to be good, and you ought to be very sorry for it, but not so sorry as you ought to be for being happy. I don't think she has given her daughter any reason to complain on the last score." He broke into his laugh again, and watched his mother's frown with interest. "I suspect that she does n't like me very well. You could meet on common ground there: you don't like her daughter."

"They must be a pair of them," said Mrs. Mulbridge immovably. "Did her mother like her studying for a doctor?"

"Yes, I understand so. Her mother is progressive she believes in the advancement of women; she thinks the men would oppress them if they got a chance."

"If one half the bold things that are running about the country had masters it would be the best thing," said Mrs. Mulbridge, opening the lid of the coffee-pot, and clapping it to with force, after a glance inside.

"That's where Mrs. Green wouldn't agree with you. Perhaps because it would make the bold things happy to have masters, though she does n't say so. Probably she wants the women to have women doctors so they won't be so well, and can have more time to think whether they have been good or not. You ought to hear some of the ladies over there talk, mother."

"I have heard enough of their talk."

"Well, you ought to hear Miss Gleason. There are very few things that Miss Gleason does n't think can be done with cut flowers, from a wedding to a funeral."

Mrs. Mulbridge perceived that her son was speaking figuratively of Miss Gleason's sentimentality, but she was not very patient with the sketch he, enjoyed giving of her. "Is she a friend of that Breen girl's?" she interrupted to ask.

"She's an humble friend, an admirer, a worshipper. The Breen girl is her ideal woman. She thinks the Breen girl is so superior to any man living that she would like to make a match for her." His mother glanced sharply at him, but he went on in the tone of easy generalization, and with a certain pleasure in the projection of these strange figures against her distorting imagination: "You see, mother, that the most advanced thinkers among those ladies are not so very different, after all, from you old-fashioned people. When they try to think of the greatest good fortune that can befall an ideal woman, it is to have her married. The only trouble is to find a man good enough; and if they can't find one, they're apt to invent one. They have strong imaginations."

"I should think they would make you sick, amongst them," said his mother.

"Are you going to have anything more to eat?" she asked, with a housekeeper's latent impatience to get her table cleared away.

"Yes," said Dr. Mulbridge; "I have n't finished yet. And I'm in no hurry this morning. Sit still, mother; I want you to hear something more about my lady friends at Jocelyn's. Dr. Breen's mother and Miss Gleason don't feel alike about her. Her mother thinks she was weak in giving up Mrs.

Maynard's case to me; but Miss Gleason told me about their discussion, and she thinks it is the great heroic act of Dr. Breen's life."

"It showed some sense, at least," Mrs. Mulbridge replied. She had tacitly offered to release her son from telling her anything when she had made her motion to rise; if he chose to go on now, it was his own affair.

She handed him the plate of biscuit, and he took one.

"It showed inspiration, Miss Gleason says. The tears came into her eyes; I understood her to say it was godlike. 'And only to think, doctor,'" he continued, with a clumsy, but unmistakable suggestion of Miss Gleason's perfervid manner, "'that such a girl should be dragged down by her own mother to the level of petty, every-day cares and duties, and should be blamed for the most beautiful act of self-sacrifice! Is n't it too bad?'"

"Rufus, Rufus!" cried his mother, "I can't stun' it! Stop!"

"Oh, Dr. Breen is n't so bad--not half so divine as Miss Gleason thinks her. And Mrs. Maynard does n't consider her surrendering the case an act of self-sacrifice at all."

"I should hope not!" said Mrs. Mulbridge. "I guess she would n't have been alive to tell the tale, if it had n't been for you."