“Well, I shouldn’t say so—no. No, I don’t think he was just what one might call stricken. At first he seemed rather depressed—but not for long. I don’t think that young man will ever be much depressed about anything while he has a listener. All he asks of life is an audience.”
“He talks beautifully,” Lily said, with the dreamy look her mother knew so well. “Don’t you think he does, Mamma? What did he talk about?”
“About nothing,” Mrs. Dodge answered cruelly. “I mean, of course, about himself.”
“Mamma!” Lily cried, quickly, and her sensitive face showed the pain she felt. “That isn’t kind, and it isn’t fair!”
“Isn’t it? I never in my life listened to such a conceited and unveracious rigmarole as that young man favoured me with this afternoon. I did everything a Christian woman could to show him I wanted him to go, but he never stopped. You can’t interrupt him when he’s wound up like that, and he’s always wound up. He makes an oration of it; he stands up, gestures like an actor, and walks around and up and down when he tells you how he’s done all the great things he almost believes in himself when he’s talking about ’em. I never knew such a story-teller in my life!”
“Mamma!”
“I never did,” Mrs. Dodge said. “He told me he’d killed three men in Mexico.”
“But, Mamma, it’s true! He did! He was prospecting for silver mines and all sorts of things in Mexico.”
“I don’t believe a word of it, Lily;—it sounded much too much like ‘adventure stories.’ I don’t think he did it; I think he read it. He said he killed those three men because they tried to ‘jump his claim,’ while he was away on a visit to his friend, the President of Mexico, and that afterward the President made him a general in the Mexican Army, and he fought in seven battles and was wounded twelve times. That was five years ago, so he must have been a general when he was about nineteen. In all my life I never heard——”
“If you please, Mamma!” Lily interrupted. “I’d rather not hear you accuse him of such things. I prefer——”