His mother would have been willing to have him go to the city if he wished, but she was too ignorant of the world outside of Corbitant to guess at his possibilities in it, and such people as she had seen from it had not pleased her with it. Those summer-boarding lady patients who came to see him were sometimes suffered to wait with her till he came in, and they used to tell her how happy she must be to keep such a son with her, and twittered their patronage of her and her nice old-fashioned parlor, and their praises of his skill in such wise against her echoless silence that she conceived a strong repugnance for all their tribe, in which she naturally included Grace when she appeared. She had decided the girl to be particularly forth-putting, from something prompt and self-reliant in her manner that day; and she viewed with tacit disgust her son’s toleration of a handsome young woman who had taken up a man’s profession. They were not people who gossiped together, or confided in each other, and she would have known nothing and asked nothing from him about her, further than she had seen for herself. But Barlow had folks, as he called them, at Corbitant; and without her own connivance she had heard from them of all that was passing at Jocelyn’s. It was her fashion to approach any subject upon which she wished her son to talk as if they had already talked of it, and he accepted this convention with a perfect understanding that she thus expressed at once her deference to him and her resolution to speak whether he liked it or not. She had not asked him about Mrs. Maynard’s sickness, or shown any interest in it; but after she learned from the Barlows that she was no longer in danger, she said to her son one morning, before he drove away upon his daily visit, “Is her husband going to stay with her, or is he going back?” “I don’t know, really,” he answered, glancing at her where she sat erect across the table from him, with her hand on the lid of the coffee-pot, and her eyes downcast; it was the face of silent determination not to be put off, which he knew. “I don’t suppose you care, mother,” he added pleasantly. “She’s nothing to me,” she assented. “What’s that friend of hers going to do?” “Which friend?” “You know. The one that came after you.” “Oh! Dr. Breen. Yes. What did you think of her?” “I don’t see why you call her doctor.” “Oh, I do it out of politeness. Besides, she is one sort of doctor. Little pills,” he added, with an enjoyment of his mother’s grimness on this point. “I should like to see a daughter of mine pretending to be a doctor,” said Mrs. Mulbridge. “Then you wouldn’t like Dr. Breen for a daughter,” returned her son, in the same tone as before. “She wouldn’t like me for a mother,” Mrs. Mulbridge retorted.