"Well, he's getting to be an old man."
"What did he say?"
His mother did not reply. She avoided his eyes, and made no further criticism of him, or of a young lady who was no doubt as indifferent to her criticisms as Neil said, since she did not recognize Mrs. Donovan on the street.
"Uncle," Neil decided deliberately, "wants me to help in the store. I can't go to Wells."
"He can't get on alone now Maggie's gone. We need your board money to run the house at all. Dan was wild to get away from Green River, but in two years he's got no farther than Wells, and ten dollars a week. I know we ought to leave you free to start yourself, if we can't give you a start, but——"
"Is that all you want to tell me?"
She put out an unaccustomed arm and pulled him awkwardly close. He came obediently, and patted her shoulder stiffly but did not kiss her. "I know what this means," she asserted, and showed a rapidly forming intention of crying on his shoulder. "It hurts me like it does you."
"It don't hurt me. I ought to have seen it myself. I ought not to have planned to go. It's all right, mother. Is that all?"