She was nevertheless very fond of her only child and
had always insisted on his spending three months of the year with her.
Ralph rendered perfect justice to her affection and knew that in her
thoughts and her thoroughly arranged and servanted life his turn
always came after the other nearest subjects of her solicitude, the
various punctualities of performance of the workers of her will. He
found her completely dressed for dinner, but she embraced her boy with
her gloved hands and made him sit on the sofa beside her. She enquired
scrupulously about her husband's health and about the young man's own,
and, receiving no very brilliant account of either, remarked that
she was more than ever convinced of her wisdom in not exposing herself
to the English climate. In this case she also might have given way.
Ralph smiled at the idea of his mother's giving way, but made no point
of reminding her that his own infirmity was not the result of the
English climate, from which he absented himself for a considerable
part of each year.
He had been a very small boy when his father, Daniel Tracy Touchett,
a native of Rutland, in the State of Vermont, came to England as
subordinate partner in a banking-house where some ten years later he
gained preponderant control.
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