“They were boy and girl together,” Selina interrupted, feebly.
“They’re not any more. Don’t be silly, Selina. You’re not as young as that.”
No, she was not as young as that. When Dirk next paid one of his rare visits to the farm she called him into her bedroom—the cool, dim shabby bedroom with the old black walnut bed in which she had lain as Pervus DeJong’s bride more than thirty years ago. She had on a little knitted jacket over her severe white nightgown. Her abundant hair was neatly braided in two long plaits. She looked somehow girlish there in the dim light, her great soft eyes gazing up at him.
“Dirk, sit down here at the side of my bed the way you used to.”
“I’m dead tired, Mother. Twenty-seven holes of golf before I came out.”
“I know. You ache all over—a nice kind of ache. I used to feel like that when I’d worked in the fields all day, pulling vegetables, or planting.” He was silent. She caught his hand. “You didn’t like that. My saying that. I’m sorry. I didn’t say it to make you feel bad, dear.”
“I know you didn’t, Mother.”
“Dirk, do you know what that woman who writes the society news in the Sunday Tribune called you to-day?”
“No. What? I never read it.”
“She said you were one of the jeunesse dorée.”