Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/11

12 "Of course not," she agreed; "that would be dreadfully shocking I quite see that, darling. But just to begin with—till you bring off your first great invention—so that your mind could be quite free for wheels and cogs and springs and strains and levers and things. Then afterwards, when your royalties begin to come in, you could repay her a thousandfold for any little help she'd been able to give you."

You've thought it all out very thoroughly, and you put it very convincingly," he said, and laughed again. "But when I marry my dear mother, I think it would be more interesting to be in love with my wife."

"Then I'm afraid you'll never marry," she said very gravely You're twenty-five, and you've never been in love yet."

"You can't possibly know that," he said quickly. And still more quickly she answered:

"You can't possibly deny it." He could not, it was true. There seemed to be nothing to do but to laugh again. So he laughed. Then he said:

"Then the time must soon come when I shall."

"I don't think so," said his mother, speaking as one who knows. Your dear father once told me he had never been in love in his life. Of course, he led me to believe otherwise when we first became engaged, and it is true that he was in one of his tempers when he said it. Buy it was true for all that. I knew it was true before he said it, if you understand, only until he said it I didn't know I knew it."

She got up rather hurriedly and walked to the window, and stood swinging the little ivory acorn that held the knob of the blind-cord. "You see, dear, I could always tell when he was telling the truth. He didn't always, I am sorry to say. No, you needn't say, 'Poor mother.' We were quite as happy as most people. Marriages aren't really unhappy when one of the people is kind and the other is loving. And I was quite fond of him. And in the marriage I hope you'll make there'll be plenty of love on one side at least."

"Mother, don't."