Eleanor saw her mother's hand shake. She had the uncomfortable sensation of one who is pursuing a perfectly correct course, but who is at the same time made to feel that he is entirely wrong. "Could he write?" "Could he write?" repeated Mrs. Bent. "Stories, I mean. I thought that perhaps I had inherited my talent--if I have any talent--from him. I thought perhaps he had written." "I never heard anything of his writing stories." Mrs. Bent was folding up her work as though she planned for flight, but Eleanor was determined that the conversation should not end. "Mother--" Mrs. Bent stood upright. "I've worked for you and slaved for you," said she thickly. With her flushed face and her eagerness she looked as she had looked twenty years before. With her prettiness something else returned, a certain vulgarity, long shed away. "You have everything you need, don't you?" "Why, mother!" "I've given up enough so that you could have things, I guess, and sewed for you and washed and ironed for you, and--" "Oh, mother, don't!" cried Eleanor. "I didn't mean to worry you, I only thought I would like to know. It's a sort of a mystery." "It ain't no mystery to me," said Mrs. Bent. Then she began to cry. "I hear somebody coming. Go in and entertain your fine beau that makes you ashamed of your mother!" Eleanor stood appalled. This must be finished, talked out. "Why, mother, I--" "There is some one on the porch, I tell you!" Eleanor listened. Her breath came in a sob. Then she went to answer the door. Richard was there with a book. He stood for a few minutes and talked, then he sat down at the piano and opened the volume upon the rack. "I have exactly thirty minutes to stay," said he. "Shall we play?" Eleanor sat down beside him, her hands like ice. As well play as sit, dumbly. When he had gone, she went to her mother's closed door. She did not mean to persist in her inquiries, her soft "Mother!" asked only for pardon. But Mrs. Bent made no answer. She was, however, not asleep; she believed, lying exhausted in her little iron bed, that at last, after years of fierce guarding of her tongue, she had done for herself. CHAPTER XIII RICHARD WRITES A NOTE Mrs. Lister was relieved in mind when, from day to day, Richard said no more about the choice of a profession. What he was to be was not as important as what he was not to be. Having given up so easily his own plans, he would, she was certain, agree with whatever plans might be made for him. He had never disobeyed in his life and he would not disobey now. She thought with comfort of his acquiescent years.