Yes, he had grown to be a man; he was changed; there was the conscious gravity of a man in his look and bearing; the cool collectedness that belongs to maturer years; the traces of thought and the lines of purpose. It had been all more or less to be seen in her boy before, but now the mother confessed to herself the growth and increase of every manly and promising trait in the face and figure she loved. That is, as soon as the first rush of delight had had its due expression, and the first broken and scattering words were spoken, and the three sat down to look at each other. The mother watched the broad brow, which was whiter than it used to be; the fine shoulders, which were even straighter and broader than of old; and the father noticed that his son overtopped him. And Mrs. Dallas's eyes shone with an incipient moisture which betrayed a soft mood she had to combat with; for she was not a woman who liked sentimental scenes; while in her husband's grey orbs there flashed out every now and then a fire of satisfied pride, which was touching in one whose face rarely betrayed feeling of any kind. Pitt was just the fellow he had hoped to see him; and Oxford had been just the right place to send him to. He said little; it was the other two who did most of the talking. The talking itself for some time was of that disjointed, insignificant character which is all that can get out when minds are so full, and enough when hearts are so happy. Indeed, for all that evening they could not advance much further. Eyes supplemented tongues sufficiently. It was not till a night's sleep and the light of a new day had brought them in a manner to themselves that anything less fragmentary could be entered upon. At breakfast all parties seemed to have settled down into a sober consciousness of satisfied desire. Then Mr. Dallas asked his son how he liked Oxford? Pitt exhausted himself in giving both the how and the why. Yet no longer like a boy. 'Think you'll end by settling in England, eh?' said his father, with seeming carelessness. 'I have not thought of it, sir.' 'What's made old Strahan take such a fancy to you? Seems to be a regular love affair.' 'He is a good friend to me,' Pitt answered seriously. 'He has shown it in many ways.' 'He'll put you in his will, I expect.' 'I think he will do nothing of the kind. He knows I will have enough.' 'Nobody knows it,' said the older Dallas drily. 'I might lose all _my_ money, for anything you can tell.' The younger man's eyes flashed with a noble sparkle in them. 'What I say is still true, sir. What is the use of Oxford?' 'Humph!' said his father. 'The use of Oxford is to teach young men of fortune to spend their money elegantly.' 'Or to enable young men who have no fortune to do elegantly without it.' 'There is no doing elegantly without money, and plenty of it,' said the elder man, looking from under lowered eyelids, in a peculiar way he had, at his son. 'Plenty of it, I tell you. You cannot have too much.'