He craned his neck forward: was it she? Was she coming, after all? It was his mother. He slipped hastily into bed and drew the covering up to his forehead. Let her think he was already asleep.
But she did not think so and said: "So you're still awake?" and she sat down on the chair near his bed on which his things were. Cilia always sat there too. He compared the two faces in silence. Oh, Cilia was much prettier, so white and red, and she had dimples in her fat cheeks when she laughed, and she was so jolly. But his mother was not ugly either.
He looked at her attentively; and then suddenly a hitherto quite unknown feeling came over him: oh, what narrow cheeks she had. And the soft hair near her temples--was--was----
"You're getting quite grey," he said all at once, quite dismayed, and stretched out his finger. "There, quite grey."
She nodded. A look of displeasure lengthened her delicate face, and made it appear still narrower.
"You should laugh more," he advised. "Then people would never see you had wrinkles."
Wrinkles--oh yes, wrinkles. She passed her hand over her forehead nervously. What uncharitable eyes children had. Youth and beauty had no doubt disappeared for ever--but it was this boy who had deprived her of the last remnant of them. And it sounded like a reproach as she said: "Sorrow has done that. Your serious illness and--and----" she hesitated: should she begin now about what troubled her so?"--and many other things," she concluded with a sigh.
"I can understand that," he said naïvely. "You're so old, too."
Well, he was honest, she had to confess that; but he said it without a trace of tender feeling. She could not suppress a slight irritation; it was not pleasant to be reminded of your age by your child. "I'm not so old as all that," she said.
"Oh, I don't mean either that you're very old. But still much older than Cilia, for example."