Miss Clendenning tapped her foot in a noiseless tattoo upon the stool, and for a time looked off into space. She wanted to draw him out, to know from what depth this particular enthusiasm had sprung.
She was accustomed to his exuberance of spirits, it was one of the many things she loved him for. If this new craze were but an idle fancy, and he had had many of them, it would wear itself out, and the longer they talked about it the better. If, however, it sprang from an inborn taste, and was the first indication of a hitherto undeveloped talent forcing itself to the surface, the situation was one demanding the greatest caution. Twigs like Oliver bent at the wrong time might never straighten out again.
"And why did you come to me about this, Ollie; why don't you talk to your father?"
"I have. He doesn't object. He says that Mr. Crocker is one of the rare men of the time, and that only inexperience among the people here prevents him from being appreciated. That's what he goes to see him for. It isn't father that worries me, it's mother. I know just whet she'll say. She's got her heart set on my studying law, and she won't listen to anything else. I wouldn't object to the law if I cared for it, but I don't. That's what makes it come so hard."
"And you want me to speak to your mother?"
"Yes, of course. That's just what I DO want you to do. Nobody can help me but you," he cried with that coaxing manner which would have seemed effeminate until one looked at his well-built, muscular body and the firm lines about his mouth. "You tell her of all the painters you knew in London when you lived there, and of what they do and how they are looked up to, and that some of them are gentlemen and not idlers and loafers. Mother will listen to you, I know, and maybe then when I tell her it won't be such a shock to her. Do you know it is incomprehensible to me, all this contempt for people who don't do just the same things that their grandfathers did. And how do I know, too, that they are right about it all? It seems to me that when a man is born a gentleman and is a gentleman he can follow any occupation he pleases. Instead of his trade making him respectable he should make IT so." He spoke with a virility she had never suspected in him before, this boy whom she had held in her arms as a baby and who was still only the child to her.
"But, Ollie," she interrupted, in some surprise, "you must never forget that you are your father's son. No one is absolutely independent in this world; everyone has his family to consider." She was becoming not only interested now, but anxious. Mr. Crocker had evidently been teaching the boy something besides the way to use his pencil. Such democratic ideas were rare in Kennedy Square.
"Yes, I know what you mean." He had sprung from his seat now and was standing over her, she looking up into his face. "You mean that it is all right for me to go into old Mr. Wardell's counting-house because he sells coffee by the cargo, but that I can't take a situation in Griggson's grocery here on the corner because he sells coffee by the pound. You mean, too, that it is possible for a man to be a professor or president of a college and still be a gentleman, but if he teaches in the public school he is done for. You mean, too, that I could saw off a patient's leg and still be invited to Uncle Tilghman's house to dinner, but that if I pulled out one of his teeth I could only eat in his kitchen."
Miss Clendenning threw back her head and laughed until the combs in her side-curls needed refastening, but she did not interrupt him.
"I can't get this sort of thing into my head and I never will. And father doesn't believe in it any more than I do, and I don't think that mother would if it wasn't for a lot of old people who live around this square and who talk of nothing all day but their relations and think there's nobody worth knowing but themselves. Now, you've GOT to talk to mother;
I won't take no for an answer," and he threw himself down beside her again. "Come, dear Midget, hold up your right hand and promise me now, before I let you go," he pleaded in his wheedling way that made him so lovable to his intimates, catching her two hands in his and holding them tight.
Of course she promised. Had she ever refused him anything? And Oliver, a boy again, now that his confessions were made, kissed her joyously on both cheeks and instantly forgetting his troubles as his habit was when prospects of relief had opened, he launched out into an account of a wonderful adventure Mr. Crocker once had in an old town in Italy, where he was locked up over-night in a convent by mistake; and how he had slept on his knapsack in the chapel, and what the magistrate had said to him the next day, and how he had to paint a portrait of that suspicious officer to prove he was a painter and a man of the best intentions. In his enthusiasm he not only acted the scene, but he imitated the gesture and dialect of the several parties to the escapade so perfectly that the little lady, in her delight over the story, quite forgot her anxiety and even the musicale itself, and only remembered the quartette when Malachi, bowing obsequiously before her, said:
"Dey's a-waitin' for you, Miss Lavinia. Mister Unger done come and Marse Richard say he can't wait a minute."
When she and Oliver entered the drawing-room the 'cellist was the centre of the group. He was stripping off the green baize cover from his instrument and at the same time was apologizing, in his broken English, for being so late. Richard was interrupting him with enthusiastic outbursts over the new score which still lay under the wax candles lighting the piano, and which he and Nathan, while waiting for the musician, had been silently practising in sundry bobs of their heads and rhythmic beatings of their hands.
"My dear Max," Richard continued, with a hand on the musician's shoulder, patting him in appreciation as he spoke, "we will forgive you anything.
