Hudson seemed to feel that it necessitated between
them some little friendly agreement not to be overawed.
Rowland sat for some time longer, partly because he wished to please the
two women and partly because he was strangely pleased himself. There
was something touching in their unworldly fears and diffident hopes,
something almost terrible in the way poor little Mrs. Hudson seemed
to flutter and quiver with intense maternal passion. She put forth one
timid conversational venture after another, and asked Rowland a number
of questions about himself, his age, his family, his occupations, his
tastes, his religious opinions. Rowland had an odd feeling at last that
she had begun to consider him very exemplary, and that she might
make, later, some perturbing discovery. He tried, therefore, to invent
something that would prepare her to find him fallible. But he could
think of nothing. It only seemed to him that Miss Garland secretly
mistrusted him, and that he must leave her to render him the service,
after he had gone, of making him the object of a little firm derogation.
Mrs. Hudson talked with low-voiced eagerness about her son.
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