“She’s an humble friend, an admirer, a worshipper. The Breen girl is her ideal woman. She thinks the Breen girl is so superior to any man living that she would like to make a match for her.” His mother glanced sharply at him, but he went on in the tone of easy generalization, and with a certain pleasure in the projection of these strange figures against her distorting imagination: “You see, mother, that the most advanced thinkers among those ladies are not so very different, after all, from you old-fashioned people. When they try to think of the greatest good fortune that can befall an ideal woman, it is to have her married. The only trouble is to find a man good enough; and if they can’t find one, they’re apt to invent one. They have strong imaginations.” “I should think they would make you sick, amongst them,” said his mother. “Are you going to have anything more to eat?” she asked, with a housekeeper’s latent impatience to get her table cleared away. “Yes,” said Dr. Mulbridge; “I haven’t finished yet. And I’m in no hurry this morning. Sit still, mother; I want you to hear something more about my lady friends at Jocelyn’s. Dr. Breen’s mother and Miss Gleason don’t feel alike about her. Her mother thinks she was weak in giving up Mrs. Maynard’s case to me; but Miss Gleason told me about their discussion, and she thinks it is the great heroic act of Dr. Breen’s life.” “It showed some sense, at least,” Mrs. Mulbridge replied. She had tacitly offered to release her son from telling her anything when she had made her motion to rise; if he chose to go on now, it was his own affair. She handed him the plate of biscuit, and he took one. “It showed inspiration, Miss Gleason says. The tears came into her eyes; I understood her to say it was godlike. ‘And only to think, doctor,’” he continued, with a clumsy, but unmistakable suggestion of Miss Gleason’s perfervid manner, “‘that _such_ a girl should be dragged down by her own mother to the level of petty, every-day cares and duties, and should be blamed for the most beautiful act of self-sacrifice! _Isn’t_ it too bad?’” “Rufus, Rufus!” cried his mother, “I can’t _stan’_ it! Stop!” “Oh, Dr. Breen isn’t so bad—not half so divine as Miss Gleason thinks her. And Mrs. Maynard doesn’t consider her surrendering the case an act of self-sacrifice at all.” “I should hope not!” said Mrs. Mulbridge. “I guess _she_ wouldn’t have been alive to tell the tale, if it hadn’t been for you.”