Some way, I didn't want Mother to talk then, for fear of what she would say.
And Mother didn't say anything about Paul Mayhew--then.

But only a few days later she told me to invite him again to the house (this time to a chafing-dish supper), and to ask Carrie Heywood and Fred Small, too.
We had a beautiful time, only again Paul Mayhew didn't "show off" at all in the way I wanted him to--though he most emphatically "showed off" in _his_ way! It seemed to me that he bragged even more about himself and his belongings than he had before.

And I didn't like at all the way he ate his food.

Why, Father didn't eat like that--with such a noisy mouth, and such a rattling of the silverware! And so it went--wise mother that she was! Far from prohibiting me to have anything to do with Paul Mayhew, she let me see all I wanted to of him, particularly in my own home.

She let me go out with him, properly chaperoned, and she never, by word or manner, hinted that she didn't admire his conceit and braggadocio.
And it all came out exactly as I suspect she had planned from the beginning.