"
"Yes, as an old friend"--and for a moment I felt it awkwardly possible.
But I put to her seriously: "_Do_ you see Jasper caught like that?"
"Well, he's only a boy--he's younger at least than she."
"Precisely; she regards him as a child. She remarked to me herself
today, that is, that he's so much younger."
Mrs. Nettlepoint took this in. "Does she talk of it with you? That shows
she has a plan, that she has thought it over!"
I've sufficiently expressed--for the interest of my anecdote--that I
found an oddity in one of our young companions, but I was far from
judging her capable of laying a trap for the other. Moreover my reading
of Jasper wasn't in the least that he was catchable--could be made to do
a thing if he didn't want to do it. Of course it wasn't impossible that
he might be inclined, that he might take it--or already have taken
it--into his head to go further with his mother's charge; but to believe
this I should require still more proof than his always being with her. He
wanted at most to "take up with her" for the voyage. "If you've
questioned him perhaps you've tried to make him feel responsible," I said
to my fellow critic.
"A little, but it's very difficult. Interference makes him perverse. One
has to go gently. Besides, it's too absurd--think of her age.
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