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Young Philip had not the faintest light or guidance in the discovery of
his mother's thoughts. He was much more easy and comfortable now that
there had been an explanation between them, though it was one of those
explanations which explained nothing. He even forgave Uncle John for
knowing more than he did, moved thereto by the consolatory thought that
John's advice had never been taken, and that his mother had always
followed her own way. This was an incalculable comfort to Pippo's mind,
and gave him composure to wait calmly for the clearing up of the
mystery, and the restoration of that perfect confidence between his
mother and himself which he was so firmly convinced had existed all his
life. He was a great deal happier after, and gave her an excellent
account of the play, which he had managed to see quite satisfactorily,
notwithstanding the other "little play of our own" which ran through
everything. At Philip's age one can see two things at once well enough.
I knew a boy who at one and the same moment got the benefit of (1st)
his own story book, which he read lying at full length before the fire,
half buried in the fur of a great rug; and (2nd) of the novel which was
being read out over his head for the benefit of the other members of
the family--or at least he strenuously asserted he did, and indeed
proved himself acquainted with both. Philip in the same way had taken
in everything in the play, even while his soul was intent upon the
opera-glass in the box. He had not missed anything of either. He gave an
account of the first, from which the drama might have been written down
had fate destroyed it: and had noticed the _minauderies_ of the heroine,
and the eager determination not to be second to her in anything which
distinguished the first gentleman, as if he had nothing else in his
mind: while all the time he had been under the fascination of the two
black eyeholes _braques_ upon him, the mysterious gaze as of a ghost
from eyes which he never saw.

This occupied some part of the forenoon, and Philip was happy. But when
he had completed his tale and began to feel the necessity of going out,
and remembered that he had nowhere to go and nothing to do, the prospect
was not alluring. He tried very hard to persuade his mother to go out
with him, but this was a risk from which Elinor shrank. She shrank, too,
from his proposal at last to go out to the park by himself.

"To the Row. I sha'n't know the people except th