ntal!" Mr. Striker bore his
recalcitrant pupil a grudge, but he was evidently trying both to be
fair and to respect the susceptibilities of his companions. But he was
unversed in the mysterious processes of feminine emotion. Ten minutes
before, there had been a general harmony of sombre views; but on hearing
Roderick's limitations thus distinctly formulated to a stranger, the two
ladies mutely protested. Mrs. Hudson uttered a short, faint sigh, and
Miss Garland raised her eyes toward their advocate and visited him with
a short, cold glance.

"I 'm afraid, Mrs. Hudson," Rowland pursued, evading the discussion
of Roderick's possible greatness, "that you don't at all thank me for
stirring up your son's ambition on a line which leads him so far from
home. I suspect I have made you my enemy."

Mrs. Hudson covered her mouth with her finger-tips and looked painfully
perplexed between the desire to confess the truth and the fear of being
impolite. "My cousin is no one's enemy," Miss Garland hereupon declared,
gently, but with that same fine deliberateness with which she had made
Rowland relax his grasp of the chair.

"Does she leave that to you?" Rowland ventured to ask, with a smile.

"We are inspired with none but Christian sentiments," said Mr. Striker;
"Miss Garland perhaps most of all. Miss Garland," and Mr. Striker
waved his hand again as if to perform an introduction which had been
regrettably omitted, "is the daughter of a minister, the granddaughter
of a minister, the sister of a minister." Rowland bowed deferentially,
and the young girl went on with her sewing, with nothing, apparently,
either of embarrassment or elation at the promulgation of these facts.
Mr. Striker continued: "Mrs. Hudson, I see, is too deeply agitated
to converse with you freely. She will allow me to address you a few
questions. Would you kindly inform her, as exactly as possible, just
what you propose to do with her son?"

The poor lady fixed her eyes appealingly on Rowland's face and seemed
to say that Mr. Striker had spoken her desire, though she herself would
have expressed it less defiantly. But Rowland saw in Mr. Striker's
many-wrinkled light blue eye, shrewd at once and good-natured, that
he had no intention of defiance, and that he was simply pompous and
conceited and sarcastically compassionate of any view of things in which
Roderick Hudson was regarded in a serious light.

"Do, my dear madam?" demanded Rowland. "I don't propose to