her eyes from Mrs. Bittridge, who, whenever she caught Mrs.
Kenton's glance, said something to her about her Clarence, and how he
used to write home to her at Ballardsville about the Kentons, so
that she felt acquainted with all of them. Her reminiscences were
perfunctory; Mrs. Bittridge had voluntarily but one topic, and that
was herself, either as she was included in the interest her son must
inspire, or as she included him in the interest she must inspire. She
said that, now they had met at last, she was not going to rest till the
Kentons had been over to Ballardsville, and made her a good, long visit;
her son had some difficulty in making her realize that the Kentons were
going to Europe. Then she laughed, and said she kept forgetting; and she
did wish they were all coming back to Tuskingum.

If it is a merit to treat a fatuous mother with deference, Bittridge had
that merit. His deference was of the caressing and laughing sort, which
took the spectator into the joke of her peculiarities as something they
would appreciate and enjoy with him. She had been a kittenish and petted
person in her youth, perhaps, and now she petted herself, after she had
long ceased to be a kitten. What was respectable and what was pathetic
in her was her wish to promote her son's fortunes with the Kentons, but
she tried to do this from not a very clear understanding of her part,
apparently, and little sense of the means. For Ellen's sake, rather
than hers, the father and mother received her overtures to their liking
kindly; they answered her patiently, and Mrs. Kenton even tried to lead
the way for her to show herself at her best, by talking of her journey
on to New York, and of the city, and what she would see there to
interest her. Lottie and Boyne, sternly aloof together in one of their
momentary alliances, listened to her replies with a silent contempt
that almost included their mother; Kenton bore with the woman humbly and
sadly.

He was, in fact, rather bewildered with the situation, for which he felt
himself remotely if not immediately responsible. Bittridge was there
among them not only on good terms, but apparently in the character of a
more than tolerated pretendant to Ellen's favor. There were passages of
time is which the father was not sure that the fellow was not engaged
to his daughter, though when these instants were gone he was aware that
there had been no overt love-making between them and Bittridge had never
offered hi