"NEVER MIND, MOMMIE"

Yet in thinking it over, this course had seemed to Mrs. Burnham eminently wise. Mr. Conway was quite as much in touch with the fashionable world as a clergyman could well be; he had been brought up in its atmosphere and had turned from what were supposed to be very alluring prospects to live the comparatively straitened life of a minister of the gospel. His undoubted scholarship commended him especially to a young fellow like Erskine who came of a scholarly line. If, without being directly appealed to for advice, the minister could be drawn into an expression of opinion about these questionable matters, it would certainly help; and under her skilful management he expressed himself; but behold, he was on the wrong side! At least he was not on the side that Ruth Burnham, having been for years accustomed to the pastorate of Dr. Dennis, had taken it for granted that he would be.

There was, he assured her, something to be said on the other side of that question. Of course he was opposed to all forms of gambling, but a social game of cards in the parlor of a friend was innocent amusement enough—much better than certain others he could name that seemed to have escaped the ban of the over-cautious. He was really in earnest about this matter. He considered that there was positive danger in drawing the lines too taut. He knew a fellow in college who had been very carefully reared in one of those very narrow homes where a card was never allowed to penetrate, and where they looked in holy horror upon the idea of his touching one elsewhere; but he hadn't been in college an entire year before he spent half his nights at cards! and he went to the bad as fast as he could. That, the clergyman believed, was what often happened when young people were held too closely. That was by no means the only instance which had come under his personal knowledge, and indeed he believed that, of the two extremes, he feared the narrow the more. Human nature was such that there was sure to be a rebound from over-strictness, and the clearer, keener brained the victim was, the more fear of results. There was much more of the same sort. Poor Ruth, who had not meant to argue, and who had wished of all things to avoid anything that would look in the least like a personal matter, tried in vain to change the subject. Erskine, with an occasional mischievous glance for her alone, led his pastor on to say much more than he had probably intended at first. Not that he differed from him in the least; on the contrary he took the rÔle of an eager youth to whom it was a vital matter to have the "narrowness" of his surroundings immediately widened.

Mrs. Burnham, disappointed and hurt, became almost entirely silent, and when she finally walked down the hall with her departing pastor, felt no wish to consult him about a matter on which she had intended to ask his advice at the first opportunity. She had a feeling that it made little difference to her what his advice was on any subject; yet she knew that that was real narrowness and that she must rise above it. Such was the condition of things on that evening in late autumn when she stood looking out of the bay window at the swiftly gathering night and appeared to be watching the passers-by through a mist of unshed tears, while Erskine played exquisite strains of harmony. His mother, listening, or rather letting the music melt unconsciously into her being, felt peculiarly alone with her responsibilities. Who was she that she should hope, alone and unaided, to battle successfully with the temptations of this great wicked world full of yawning pitfalls especially prepared for the feet of young men? How was she ever to hope to guide a boy like Erskine successfully through its snares, without even a pastor to lean upon? What if Erskine should be like that college boy Mr. Conway had taken such pains to describe graphically and insist upon going to the bad as soon as he was away from her influence? She could see that that was just what was being feared for him; it was probably what Mr. Conway meant.

Wait, must her boy, her one treasure, be away from her influence? Yes, of course he must; everybody said so. Why, there were people who were certain that she was ruining her son by keeping so close to him even now. Not only now, but away back in his young boyhood. She recalled with a shiver of pain how her husband had once said to her:—

"Have a care, Ruth; you don't want to make a Molly Coddle of the boy, remember."

Later, she had heard of one of the Mitchells as declaring that "Mrs. Burnham was making a regular 'Miss Nancy' of that boy of hers, and if somebody did not take him in hand, he would be ruined."

Then, her intimate friends had been as plain with their cautions as they dared. Had not Marian Dennis pleaded earnestly for a famous boys' school fifty miles away? "It would be so good for him, Ruth; he would learn self-reliance and patience; two lessons that a boy never can learn at home, when there is but one." And Dr. Dennis had added his word: "As a rule, my friend, a boy learns manliness by being compelled to be manly and to depend upon himself."

There was her old friend Eurie, with four rollicking, romping boys of her own, always looking doubtfully at Ruth's fair-haired, fair-skinned, rather quiet, always gentlemanly boy.

"Let him come and spend a summer with us, Ruth," she urged, "and row and swim and hunt and get almost shot and quite drowned a few times; it will do him good, body and soul. Boys learn manhood by hairbreadth escapes, you know." She had laughed at Ruth's shudder and had told Marian privately that "Ruth was simply idiotic over that poor boy."

Only Flossy, their dainty, gentle, still beautiful Flossy, had seemed to understand. Had she too meant a caution? As she kissed Ruth good-by, the four girls of Chautauqua memory having spent a never-to-be-forgotten week together at Ruth Burnham's home, she had said gently:—

"The best place in the world for a boy, dear Ruth, is as close to his mother as he wants to be, just as long as he plans to be there. I have studied boys a good deal, and I think I am sure of so much."

Ruth's face had flushed over this murmured word. She had been half vexed with the others, but it had been given to their little Flossy, as often before, to give her a new thought. She studied over it; she took it to heart and let it color all her movements. More and more after that, although Erskine was still quite young, she kept herself in the background and pushed him forward. On their little trips to the larger city and in any of their outings indeed, she compelled herself to sit quietly in the waiting-room, while Erskine went to buy tickets and check baggage. It is true that every nerve in her body quivered with apprehension until he was safely beside her again, yet she held firmly to her purpose.

Very early in their life alone together she ceased any attempt to drive the ponies that were Erskine's delight, and sat beside him outwardly quiet and inwardly quaking until she had learned her lesson—reminding herself continually that the boy's father had taught him to love and to manage horses when he was too small to touch his feet to the carriage floor.

She gave up early, and with a purpose, the taking Erskine to town with her for a round of shopping or pleasure-seeking, and learned to say meekly and in a natural tone of voice:—

"Can you take me to town on Saturday, dear? I have many errands to do, and I don't like to go alone."

She had lived through all these things, and it was not in any such directions that either she or her friends had fears any more. Erskine was self-reliant enough; in fact he was masterful, though so courteous in his ways that few beside herself suspected it. He had inherited much from his father. Still, the mother knew that there was a strong sense in which she dominated his life. That he went to certain places and refrained from going to certain others simply to please her and not at all as a matter of principle. She was far from being satisfied with this, and was always asking herself: "How long will he do this?" and "Are such concessions worth anything in the way of character?"

She had many questions, this anxious mother of one child; there were days, and this was one, when they pressed her sorely.

The music flowed on; now soft and tender as a caress, now breaking into great waves of sound that meant energy, and possibly conflict.

Suddenly it ceased with a great crash of keys, still in harmony, and the boy wheeled on his stool, looked at his mother, and laughed.

"You woke up the wrong chap that time, didn't you, mother?" he said. "It was as good as a play to hear him go on and to watch your face. I haven't enjoyed anything so much in a long time."

He laughed again over the memory. His mother did not join in the laugh; just then she could not. Those tears that she had managed, not allowing them to fall, had somehow got into her throat. She felt that she should choke if she attempted to speak, and she could not summon at the moment more than the ghost of a smile.

Erskine wheeled back to the piano for a moment, played a few bars of a popular song with one hand, humming it softly; then, in the midst of a line, arose and strolled over to the window where his mother stood.

"Never mind, mommie," he said, bending his tall form low enough to kiss the tip of one ear—a whimsical little caress peculiar to himself. "She mustn't go and look at the clouds and the storm and the dark as though there wasn't any sunshine anywhere. I am not intending to go to the dogs as soon as I go away from home, merely because my mother did her level best all her life to keep me right side up with care; and in my opinion it would be a poor sort of chap who would do any such thing. And I don't feel the need of a social game of cards now and then as a safeguard, either. I don't feel especially 'taut,' mommie, honestly; and I don't care a straw for the Mitchells' card party. Did you really think I cared for it on that account? How absurd! Don't you worry one least little mite, mamma, there is absolutely nothing to be troubled over except that you have a pastor who doesn't know enough to talk a little bit on the side that you want talked, or else keep still. Wasn't it funny?" He laughed once more, then added, a trifle more gravely:—

"When that man is older, he will understand people better, perhaps. Don't you hope so? Shall I read to you, mamma, a little while? I have a delicious book here that I know you will enjoy."

Did he understand, would he ever understand, what a mountain weight he had suddenly lifted from his mother's heart? What a gracious, sweet-spirited, self-sacrificing boy he was! Had there ever been one just like him? She knew he was fond of the Mitchells, and that they were eager to have him with them in their social life; they had brought as much pressure as they could, and he had resisted it for his mother's sake.

It was sweet, but—She could not keep back one little sigh. She was a devoted mother; but she would, oh, so much rather it had been for Christ's sake.

There was an unexpected outcome from that interview with Mr. Conway. In a very short time it became evident that he had lost his hold upon Erskine. Not that the boy turned against him seriously; but he smiled over some of his words and purposely misquoted others in a spirit of mischief. Occasionally there was a curve to the smile that suggested a sneer; and the strongest feeling he evinced for him might be called indifference. In his secret heart Erskine knew that he was being unreasonable, and was really resenting his mother's having been made uncomfortable; but he could not get away from the feeling that Mr. Conway, having been weighed in his mother's balance and found wanting, was not to his mind, however much he himself might differ from her. Of course all this was mere feeling, not principle.

Nevertheless, the clergyman, who prided himself on his influence with young men and who puzzled anxiously over Erskine Burnham's changed attitude which he vaguely felt and could not define, might have been helped if some one had been frank enough to explain the situation. Nobody did. The boy scoffed in secret, assuring himself that a minister who could not be a comfort to a woman and a widow when she tried to lean on him was a "poor sort of chap." As for the mother, she told herself that if she had not been weak and foolish in carrying her anxieties to others, Mr. Conway would not have lost his influence over Erskine; and the minister remained perplexed and anxious; he was sincerely eager to be helpful to young men.

Outwardly they all went on as before. The Mitchells and others of their kind made their card parties and their social dances and their theatre parties and continued to invite eagerly Mrs. Burnham's handsome young son, who cheerfully declined all invitations and stayed with his mother. But he argued no more; in fact he declined to do so, setting the whole matter gayly aside, with a cheerful—

"Don't let us argue about these things any more, mommie. We shouldn't agree, and they are not worth disagreeing over. I don't care a copper for the whole crowd of entertainments that you think of with interrogation points attached, and I don't care two straws about what others think of me in connection with them; so let us taboo the whole subject and enjoy ourselves."

His mother would have liked something very different. She would have been glad if he had given himself to the study of such matters, and settled them from principle. She harassed herself by imagining what an unspeakably happy mother she would be if instead of his gay, kind words he had said:—

"I have been looking into this matter carefully and I understand why you take the position that you do. In fact I do not see how a Christian could do otherwise. I shall take it with you, and you may consider that the question is settled with me for all time."

However, it is something, indeed it is a great deal, for a lone and lonely mother to have a boy go her way, and go smilingly, merely to please her.