"What is it? You're not goin'
to cry, are ye?"
She was already weeping copiously as she gasped between her sobs:
"Oh! If you only COULD."
"COULD? WHAT?"
"Take that little wayward child into your life and mould her."
"Here, one moment, mater: let me get the full force of your idea.
You want ME to MOULD Margaret?"
"Yes, dear."
"Ha!" he laughed uneasily. Then said decidedly: "No, mater, no. I
can do most things, but as a moulder--oh, no. Let Ethel do it--if
she'll stay, that is."
"Alaric, my dear--I mean to take her really into your life 'to have
and to hold.'" And she looked pleadingly at him through her tear-
dimmed eyes.
"But, I don't want to hold her, mater!" reasoned her son.
"It would be the saving of her," urged the old lady. "That's all
very well, but what about me?"
"It would be the saving of us all!" she insisted significantly. But
Alaric was still obtuse. "Now, how would my holding and moulding
Margaret save us?" The old lady placed her cards deliberately, on
the table as she said sententiously: "She would stay with us here--
if you were--engaged to her!" The shock had cone. His mother's
terrible alternative was now before him in all its naked horror. A
shiver ran through him. The thought of a man, with a future as
brilliant as his, being blighted at the outset by such a
misalliance.
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