“I do not mind interruption in the slightest, Mrs. Thomas. Indeed, it is in this sitting room where the interruption is usually of the most stimulating kind.” And he looked directly over his teacup at me, causing me to blush.

“Yes, I see.” Mama smiled at him rather conspiratorially, I thought. “But do go on, please.”

“I have always believed, Mrs. Thomas, in moderation—not to be temperate merely for temperance’s sake, but because this way one might try all the world has to offer. Moderation allows for an enormous range of experience and tastes”—he held up his teacup—“without possible damage to your parts.”

“Go on,” I prodded softly as he took a sip of tea.

He grew earnest. “I believe in living a life that rests upon a wealth of experience, that comes from having known and seen all the shining face of the world.”

“Yes,” I answered, smiling at the picture that had risen in my mind, “but that does not sound like a weak life to me.”

“Weak was only Mr. James’s word. I prefer moderate. Experience! Travel! Encounter all! Yes, yes! But within bounds. How might the mind fully relish all it has digested if the stomach rebels at too great a quantity or too overspiced an encounter?”

At this, his mother clapped her hands together merrily and said, “Jonathan, my dear, you make me positively long for the supper table. We must leave these ladies to a less gustatory conversation!” And then she rose, nodding her head amiably at Mama and giving my hand a little squeeze as she passed me by.

And he? He gave my hand his own farewell, a touch that lingered just a hair beyond where it should, leaving me with a new picture to feast upon in my mind’s eye. For he, too, longed to see the world and take in the full glory of what life might offer. His words sparked my banked imagination and fanned it high again. I knew he had said what he did for my benefit. I knew he meant me to link his vision, if I wanted, to my own.

With each day, it seemed the light in Mama’s eyes grew higher, and now she took great interest in my appearance, and finding me at my desk would take the pen from my hand, with a titch! and rub the calloused spots smooth again with linseed oil and rose. At first I protested, for I had prescribed myself all the lives in the Encyclopedia Britannica and had just arrived at Carlyle. Simple, blunt, and truthful, I found him a most rugged and refreshing sensibility, one from whom I did not like to be pulled.

“I do not like veils. I do not like vermilion prosing about a death,” I pronounced to Mr. Lanman one evening. “Men die in dramatic, ridiculous wastes of lives, all the time. And the prose should render it simply.”