"Mama Joy—my stepmother. I call her that. You see, father wants me to call her mama—he really wanted it mother, but I couldn't—and she's so young to have me for a daughter, so she wants me to call her Joy; that's her name. So I call her both and please them both, I hope. Did you ever study diplomacy, Mr. Boyle?"
"I never did, but I'm going to start right in," Billy told her, and half meant it.
"A thorough understanding of the subject is indispensable—when you have a stepmother—a young stepmother. You've met her, haven't you?"
"No," said Billy. He did not want to talk about her stepmother, but he hated to tell her so. "Er—yes, I believe I did see her once, come to think of it," he added honestly when memory prompted him.
Miss Bridger laughed, stopped, and laughed again. "How Mama Joy would hate you if she knew that!" she exclaimed relishfully.
"Why?"
"Oh, you wait! If ever I tell her that you—that anybody ever met her and then forgot! Why, she knows the color of your hair and eyes, and she knows the pattern of that horsehair hat-band and the size of your boots—she admires a man whose feet haven't two or three inches for every foot of his height—she says you wear fives, and you don't lack much of being six feet tall, and—"
"Oh, for Heaven's sake!" protested Billy, very red and uncomfortable. "What have I done to yuh that you throw it into me like that? My hands are up—and they'll stay up if you'll only quit it."
Miss Bridger looked at him sidelong and laughed to herself. "That's to pay you for forgetting that you ever met Mama Joy," she asserted. "I shouldn't be surprised if next week you'll have forgotten that you ever met me. And if you do, after that chicken stew—"
"You're a josher," said Billy helplessly, not being prepared to say just all he thought about the possibility of his forgetting her. He wished that he understood women better, so that he might the better cope with the vagaries of this one; and so great was his ignorance that he never dreamed that every man since Adam had wished the same thing quite as futilely.