She was glad of it for the
young people's sake as well as her own, and returned to her old habit
of keeping open house one evening in the week between eight and ten,
with cups of coffee and varieties of cheap foreign drinks, and slight
but dainty cakes made by herself and Babie according to lessons taken
together at the school of cookery.
As Allen declared these evenings a grievance, and often thought
himself unable to bear family chatter, she had made the old
consulting room as like his luxurious apartment at home as furniture
and fittings could do, and he was always free to retire thither.
Indeed the toleration and tenderness with which his mother treated
him were a continual wonder and annoyance to Barbara, the active
little busy bee, who not unjustly considered him the drone of the
family, and longed to sting him, not to death but to exertion.
It was provoking that when all the other youths had long finished
breakfast and gone forth, Mother Carey should wait lingering in the
dining-room to cherish some delicate hot morceau and cup of coffee,
till the tardy, soft-falling feet came down the stairs, and then sit
patiently as long as he chose to dally with his meal, telling how
little he had slept. Babie had tried her tongue on both, but Allen,
when she shouted at his door that breakfast was ready, came forth no
sooner, and when he did so, told his mother that he could not have
children screaming at his door at all hours of the morning.
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