She recovered first. "Now let's stop this school-boy chatter—"
"You mean school-girl chatter."
"Both. Your mother is in a very serious predicament. We must help her."
He became quite serious. "I wish you would advise me. You know so much more about the whole subject than I do. I'm eager to get to work on the books. I suppose it is too much to expect that they will come up to-day?"
"They might. I'll go and inquire."
"No indeed, let me go. Am I not an inmate here?" He disappeared into the house, leaving her to muse on his face. He began to interest her, this passionate, self-willed, moody youth. She perceived in him the soul of the conqueror. His swift change of temper, his union of sport-loving boy and ambitious man made him as interesting as a play. "He'll make his way," she decided, using the vague terms of prophecy into which a girl falls when regarding the future of a young man. It's all so delightfully mysterious, this path of the youth who makes his way upward to success.
A shout announced his return, and looking up she perceived him bearing down upon her with an armful of books.
"Here they are!" he exulted. "Red ones, blue ones, brown ones—which shall we begin on?"
"Blue—that's my color."
"Agreed! Blue it is." He dumped them all down on the wide, swinging couch and fell to turning them over. "Dark blue or light blue?"