Margaret looked out through the forest and watched a woodpecker at work on the dry side of a hollow trunk, the side protected from the driving rain.
"And you would give up your career because she wants it? How do you know she's right about it? And who's to suffer if she's wrong? Be a painter, Oliver, if you want to! Your mother can't coddle you up forever! No mother should. Do what you can do best, and to please yourself, not somebody else," and then she laughed lightly as if to break the force of her words.
Oliver looked at her in indignation that anyone—even Margaret—should speak so of his mother. It was the first time in all his life that he had heard her name mentioned without the profound reverence it deserved. Then a sense of the injustice of her words took possession of him, as the solemn compact he had made with his mother not to be a burden on her while the mortgage was unpaid, rose in his mind. This thought and Margaret's laugh softened any hurt her words had given him, although the lesson that they were intended to teach lingered in his memory for many days thereafter.
"You would not talk that way, Madge, if you knew my dear mother," he said, quietly. "There is nothing in her life she loves better than me. She doesn't want me to be a painter because—" He stopped, fearing she might not understand his answer.
"Go on—why not?" The laugh had faded out of her voice now, and a tone almost of defiance had taken its place.
"She says it is not the profession of a gentleman," he answered, sadly.
"I do not agree with her, but she thinks so, and nothing can shake her."
"If those are her opinions, I wonder what she would think of ME?" There was a slight irritation in her voice—somehow she always became irritable when Oliver spoke of his mother. She was ashamed of it, but it was true.
All his anger was gone now. Whatever opinion the world might have on any number of things there could be but one opinion of Madge. "She would LOVE you, little girl," he burst out as he laid his hand on her arm—the first time he had ever touched her with any show of affection. "You'd make her love you. She never saw anybody like you before, and she never will. That you are an artist wouldn't make any difference. It's not the same with you. You're a woman."
The girl's eyes again sought the woodpecker. It was stabbing away with all its might, driving its beak far into the yielding bark. It seemed in some way to represent her own mood. After a moment's thought she said thoughtfully as she rested her head on the edge of the slant:
"Ollie, what is a gentleman?" She knew, she thought, but she wanted him to define it.