“You see,” he went on. “Mrs. Winter is my father’s cousin. You wouldn’t suspect it, but my father’s family were—decent people.”
“Oh!” Nina breathed.
“I don’t mean that mother’s family wasn’t—all right,” he said. “My mother—” He stopped. “My mother was a saint,” he announced. An odd change came over his face; all the arrogance vanished, leaving it weary and sorrowful. “And my father wasn’t,” he added.
Another silence ensued.
“So Bill’s got this idea of a simple life,” he said, with something like a sneer. “He won’t let us see any of father’s people. Wouldn’t let me go to college. He made me take this job—in the National Electric—when I was only seventeen. In a year I’ll be twenty-one, and then Bill can go to blazes. In the meantime—not much I can do. He controls the finances. He’s away now, though. And I’m to Mrs. Winter’s.”
“Oh, I don’t blame you!” thought Nina. “What a dreadful thing—to take a boy like this and put him to work at seventeen, and make him live in such a way! And if Lucille is his father’s cousin—She knows really good people—It really would help him—”
And because she was, in spite of her worldly experiences, so innocent and good at heart, so ready to think well of every one, and so anxious to help this unhappy boy, she did give him her advice. She told him what clothes to take, what to tip the servants, and so on.
“Please don’t tell Margie where I’ve gone,” he said. “I’ll be back to-morrow night for dinner. And she’ll be all right—with you next door.” He arose. “Thank you!” he said. “You’ve been—very kind to me.”
She had meant to be. She hoped, she believed, that she had done well in helping him to elude the tyrant Bill.