In one respect, however, certainly they achieved no rigour--they were
wonderfully amiable and ecstatic about Morgan. It was a genuine
tenderness, an artless admiration, equally strong in each. They even
praised his beauty, which was small, and were as afraid of him as if they
felt him of finer clay. They spoke of him as a little angel and a
prodigy--they touched on his want of health with long vague faces.
Pemberton feared at first an extravagance that might make him hate the
boy, but before this happened he had become extravagant himself. Later,
when he had grown rather to hate the others, it was a bribe to patience
for him that they were at any rate nice about Morgan, going on tiptoe if
they fancied he was showing symptoms, and even giving up somebody's "day"
to procure him a pleasure. Mixed with this too was the oddest wish to
make him independent, as if they had felt themselves not good enough for
him. They passed him over to the new members of their circle very much
as if wishing to force some charity of adoption on so free an agent and
get rid of their own charge. They were delighted when they saw Morgan
take so to his kind playfellow, and could think of no higher praise for
the young man. It was strange how they contrived to reconcile the
appearance, and indeed the essential fact, of adoring the child with
their eagerness to wash their hands of him. Did they want to get rid of
him before he should find them out? Pemberton was finding them out month
by month. The boy's fond family, however this might be, turned their
backs with exaggerated delicacy, as if to avoid the reproach of
interfering. Seeing in time how little he had in common with them--it
was by _them_ he first observed it; they proclaimed it with complete
humility--his companion was moved to speculate on the mysteries of
transmission, the far jumps of heredity. Where his detachment from most
of the things they represented had come from was more than an observer
could say--it certainly had burrowed under two or three generations.