"Like a member of the family."
"Do you teach nights?"
"I'm going to teach you nights."
And it was so arranged, the lessons to begin directly after Christmas.
The boy became briefly embarrassed, boggling over his thanks. But
Charles cut him short. "I'm doing it because I want to. That's the only
reason I ever do anything."
Relieved, Miss Angela's brother turned to the door, for all the world
like one who had come to mend the lamps, and nothing else.
"By the way," said Charles, casually. "Thank your sister for her note,
and say that I'll send an answer by mail."
He was left pleased with the interview, and with himself. In the
generous gift of three hours a week to Angela's brother, he perceived
something fitting and compensatory. If obligation existed--and it did,
in a way--did not this discharge it, subtly and modernly? Kiss the
sister on the sofa, tutor the brother in the Studio--what more fair or
honorable than that?
One thing had rather struck him, of course--Wallie Flower's saying that
he had hated to come away from Mitchellton. This, it seemed, had been
chiefly due to Mr. Bush, the boy's science teacher at the Mitchellton
Academy, whom Wallie clearly adored, whose eyebrows he had blown off in
an experiment only last summer. As he had previously understood that
both the Doctor and Mrs. Flower had also been attached to Mitchellton,
it really appeared that Miss Angela was the only member of the family
who had actually desired to make the move. And she had moved.
But this thought--like the hypercriticisms on the note--merely knocked
at the door of the young man's mind and passed on. He felt himself
warming anew toward this simple Type, with its charming friendly
instincts and its sweet forgiveness of the stormy ways of men. On his
return from his holiday, he resolved that he would give Angela some
token of his regard more substantial than a note by mail: send her, say,
with that book of hers, a costly box of appreciative blossoms.