"What am I to say, Mamma? Addie is such a very determined boy. He spoke to his mother at Nunspeet and his mother agrees with him. I don't."
The old woman's head dropped to her breast and went nodding softly up and down.
"The older we become," she said, "the more disappointment we find in life. . . ."
She looked up; there was resentment in her eyes. She beckoned Addie to her, with that imperative gesture which she sometimes employed even to the oldest of her children.
The boy came:
"What is it, Grandmamma?"
She looked at him; and something within her at once grew softer, when she saw him standing before her, with a grave, gentle smile on his fair boyish face, the face which was at the same time so virile in its strength. Still, she shook her grey head, as though to say that she knew all about it; and there was reproach in her flickering eyes.
"Well, well," she said. "Mamma has been speaking to me, Addie. And Mamma tells me that you have changed your mind . . . that you want to be a doctor."
"Yes, Granny."
"Well, well . . . and Papa and Mamma and Grandmamma, who would so much have liked to see you make your way in the diplomatic service."
