"That's too bad," said Julia Delafield slowly, gravely, as she heard the half news. "I'm awfully sorry—I'm awfully sorry for your mother, Don. You fought? My! I wish I had been there to see it."
Miss Julia's face flushed once more, indicative of the heroic soul which lay in her own misshapen body.
"I didn't want to hit that fellow," said Don. "Of course, they had no chance, either of them, with a man who could box a bit."
"And you learned that—in college, Don?"
He only grinned in reply, and thrust the wounded hand into his pocket, out of sight.
"I'll warrant you, Don," said Miss Julia, "that if it hadn't been for you old Tarbush, the town marshal, never would have taken Johnnie Adamson to jail. Those two were a public nuisance every Saturday afternoon. I'm glad you have ended it. But tell me, what made them pick on you?"
Don Lane struggled for a time, not daring to look at his mother, before he spoke. "The half-wit wouldn't let us pass, and then his father called me a name—if that man or any other ever calls me that again, I'm going to beat him up till his own people won't know him. I can't tell you," he went on, flushing.
He did not catch the sudden look which now passed between the two women. A sudden paleness replaced the flush on Miss Julia's cheek. A horror sat in her eye. "What does he know?" was the question she asked of Aurora Lane, eye only speaking the query.
"At least, Miss Julia," said poor Don, "you somehow certainly must know about me. I'll get all my debts squared around some time. As soon as I can get settled down in my new place West—I've got a fine engineering job out in Wyoming already—I'm going to have my mother come. And if ever I get on in the world, there are some other things I'm not going to forget. Any friend of hers——" His big hand, waved toward his mother, told the rest of what he could not speak.
They sat on, uncomfortable, for a time, neither of the three knowing how much the others knew, nor how much each ought to know. Of the three, Aurora Lane was most prepared. For twenty years she had been learning to be prepared. For twenty years she had been praying that her boy never would know what now he did know.