son
had told her about the _Patagonia_, for which she was sorry, as this
would mean a longer voyage. She was a poor creature in any boat and
mainly confined to her cabin even in weather extravagantly termed fine--as
if any weather could be fine at sea.

"Ah then your son's going with you?" I asked.

"Here he comes, he'll tell you for himself much better than I can pretend
to." Jasper Nettlepoint at that moment joined us, dressed in white
flannel and carrying a large fan. "Well, my dear, have you decided?" his
mother continued with no scant irony. "He hasn't yet made up his mind,
and we sail at ten o'clock!"

"What does it matter when my things are put up?" the young man said.
"There's no crowd at this moment; there will be cabins to spare. I'm
waiting for a telegram--that will settle it. I just walked up to the
club to see if it was come--they'll send it there because they suppose
this house unoccupied. Not yet, but I shall go back in twenty minutes."

"Mercy, how you rush about in this temperature!" the poor lady exclaimed
while I reflected that it was perhaps _his_ billiard-balls I had heard
ten minutes before. I was sure he was fond of billiards.

"Rush? not in the least. I take it uncommon easy."

"Ah I'm bound to say you do!" Mrs. Nettlepoint returned with
inconsequence. I guessed at a certain tension between the pair and a
want of consideration on the young man's part, arising perhaps from
selfishness. His mother was nervous, in suspense, wanting to be at rest
as to whether she should have his company on the voyage or be obliged to
struggle alone. But as he stood there smiling and slowly moving his fan
he struck me somehow as a person on whom this fact wouldn't sit too
heavily. He was of the type of those whom other people worry about, not
of those who worry about other people. Tall and strong, he had a
handsome face, with a round head and close-curling hair; the whites of
his eyes and the enamel of his teeth, under his brown moustache, gleamed
vaguely in the lights of the Back Bay. I made out that he was sunburnt,
as if he lived much in the open air, and that he looked intelligent but
also slightly brutal, though not in a morose way. His brutality, if he
had any, was bright and finished. I had to tell him who I was, but even
then I saw how little he placed me and that my explanations gave me in
his mind no great identity or at any rate no great importance. I foresaw
that he would in interc