Blyth had proposed to him
when they met at the turnpike, before his mother became calm enough to
speak three words together without bursting into tears. When she at
last recovered herself sufficiently to be able to address him with some
composure, she did not speak, as he had expected, of his past
delinquencies or of his future prospects, but of the lodging which he
then inhabited, and of the stranger whom he had suffered to become his
friend. Although Mat's gallant rescue of "Columbus" had warmly
predisposed Valentine in his favor, the painter was too conscientious
to soften facts on that account, when he told Zack's mother where her
son was now living, and what sort of companion he had chosen to lodge
with. Mrs. Thorpe was timid, and distrustful as all timid people are;
and she now entreated him with nervous eagerness to begin his promised
reform by leaving Kirk Street, and at once dropping his dangerous
intimacy with the vagabond stranger who lived there.
Zack defended his friend to his mother, exactly as he had already
defended him to Valentine--but without shaking her opinion, until he
bethought himself of promising that in this matter, as in all others,
he would be finally guided by the opinion of Mr.
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