However, he had only a slight recurrence of the resentment which had assailed him during the winter at every sign of his mother's interest in Morgan; though he was still ashamed of his aunt sometimes, when it seemed to him that Fanny was almost publicly throwing herself at the widower's head.
Fanny and he had one or two arguments in which her fierceness again astonished and amused him.
"You drop your criticisms of your relatives," she bade him, hotly, one day, "and begin thinking a little about your own behaviour! You say people will 'talk' about my--about my merely being pleasant to an old friend! What do I care how they talk?
I guess if people are talking about anybody in this family they're talking about the impertinent little snippet that hasn't any respect for anything, and doesn't even know enough to attend to his own affairs!" "Snippet,' Aunt Fanny!" George laughed.

"How elegant! And 'little snippet'-- when I'm over five-feet-eleven ?" "I said it!" she snapped, departing.

"I don't see how Lucy can stand you!" "You'd make an amiable stepmother-in-law!" he called after her.

"I'll be careful about proposing to Lucy!" These were but roughish spots in a summer that glided by evenly and quickly enough, for the most part, and, at the end, seemed to fly.

On the last night before George went back to be a Junior, his mother asked him confidently if it had not been a happy summer.
He hadn't thought about it, he answered.