er had said it would
never do and that this was why school was impossible. Mrs. Moreen
exhibited no discomfiture; she only continued blandly: "Mr. Moreen will
be delighted to meet your wishes. As I told you, he has been called to
London for a week. As soon as he comes back you shall have it out with
him."

This was so frank and friendly that the young man could only reply,
laughing as his hostess laughed: "Oh I don't imagine we shall have much
of a battle."

"They'll give you anything you like," the boy remarked unexpectedly,
returning from the window. "We don't mind what anything costs--we live
awfully well."

"My darling, you're too quaint!" his mother exclaimed, putting out to
caress him a practised but ineffectual hand. He slipped out of it, but
looked with intelligent innocent eyes at Pemberton, who had already had
time to notice that from one moment to the other his small satiric face
seemed to change its time of life. At this moment it was infantine, yet
it appeared also to be under the influence of curious intuitions and
knowledges. Pemberton rather disliked precocity and was disappointed to
find gleams of it in a disciple not yet in his teens. Nevertheless he
divined on the spot that Morgan wouldn't prove a bore. He would prove on
the contrary a source of agitation. This idea held the young man, in
spite of a certain repulsion.

"You pompous little person! We're not extravagant!" Mrs. Moreen gaily
protested, making another unsuccessful attempt to draw the boy to her
side. "You must know what to expect," she went on to Pemberton.

"The less you expect the better!" her companion interposed. "But we
_are_ people of fashion."

"Only so far as _you_ make us so!" Mrs. Moreen tenderly mocked. "Well
then, on Friday--don't tell me you're superstitious--and mind you don't
fail us. Then you'll see us all. I'm so sorry the girls are out. I
guess you'll like the girls. And, you know, I've another son, quite
different from this one."

"He tries to imitate me," Morgan said to their friend.

"He tries? Why he's twenty years old!" cried Mrs. Moreen.

"You're very witty," Pemberton remarked to the child--a proposition his
mother echoed with enthusiasm, declaring Morgan's sallies to be the
delight of the house.

The boy paid no heed to this; he only enquired abruptly of the visitor,
who was surprised afterwards that he hadn't struck him as offensively
forward: "Do you _want_ very much to come?"