“Excellent!” he answered heartily. “It is one of the oldest and most honorable professions; mothers are people we can in nowise ever do without.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Winny, in a satisfied voice, “and that’s what I’m going to be; I made up my mind years ago.”
One day as he arrived at their trysting place he discovered that Winny was crying in right down earnest, and not for joy that Ladysmith had been relieved. The little red-bordered handkerchief was screwed up into a tight, wet ball, and the small figure in blue serge looked very woebegone indeed. She had taken off her fisherman’s cowl, and cast it on the ground beside her; and when she saw her friend, instead of waving him a gay welcome as he came up, she shook her curly brown hair round her cheeks to hide her face.
All this was so unlike Winny that the man immediately reflected with dismay that he had not read the morning paper at all carefully. It was possible that some disaster had happened to her father. In those days we were apt to trace all sorrows to South Africa.
“No bad news, I hope?” he said in rather a hesitating way as he came up.
Winny shook her head till her face was entirely hidden by her hair; but she did not answer otherwise.
“You may as well tell me what’s the matter,” said the man; “it may not be past mending.”
Now there was something about this man that inspired confidence; moreover, he offered Winny his own handkerchief, which was large and clean and comforting. So she accepted it, mopped her wet face, shook back her hair, and began: “I don’t bathe with the others, you know.” Here she paused so long that the man said, “Well?” though it was against his principles to interrupt anybody’s narrative.
“I bathe at Herrington’s machines,” she continued, “where we always bathed last year—daddie too—right far away at the end of the beach. My aunt and cousins bathe where the niggers are, and the concert, and such crowds of people you have to wait ever so long for a machine. So I asked if I might bathe with Herrington like last year, for he’s such a nice man, and he takes such care of me, and daddie liked him awfully. There’s been Herringtons in Wolsuth since 1400!”