“Father will not come in,” she said, going to him and speaking very quietly to gain time, also because she did not know exactly how best to break the matter to this sixteen-year-old brother of hers, who, partly through perversity, but chiefly because his father had never understood his temperament or considered him as an individual, was the sort of cross between a mule and a firebrand dubbed “an impossibility” by people in general.
“Who or what is Pam?”
“She! She’s the finest year-old brindled pup you ever rolled your eyes on, only a quarter English for bone and grit, and the rest Boston for looks. Her father’s got eight firsts, and Bill Bent’s father owns the mother, and she’s reckoned the finest bitch shown this year. I paid fifty, but if Bill hadn’t been my chum, two hundred was the price! I called her Pam, after Mummy, you know, and I thought maybe she’d keep her for her own if father sends me off again to where they won’t have Pam. Lots of women have Boston bulls to ride out with them every day,” while, at the likelihood of catastrophe in connection with his pet, the animation that had lighted the boy’s face and shown the improving possibility of latent manhood died out, a weary look replacing it, and the Cub dropped into a lounging chair and began to cough, holding his hand to his side.
“If you think I’d better not bring her up, I’ll take her round to the stable right away,” he said, when the fit had passed over.
“Leave her downstairs for now,” said Brooke; “I’m not sure if there is any stable to-day,” and sitting on the arm of the chair, untangling his mop of hair with her strong, slender fingers, a proceeding that he did not resent as roughly as usual, she began to give him a brief history of the past two days. At first he looked at her in amazement, as if he thought that she had lost her mind, then his head sank, and when she finished and tried to take his hand, he pulled it away, and, turning from her, buried his face in the chair back, breaking into long sobs that almost strangled him, and that he could not stifle.
In vain Brooke tried to comfort him, to find if there was anything on his mind of which she did not know. Her brother had never been emotional in this way, and though she knew that her father’s strictness with the boy was a sign that all his hope was in him, she never dreamed the Cub would care so much, if at all. Pushing her away, he staggered toward the door, his face still hidden by his hands.
“Where are you going? you must be very quiet,” said Brooke, getting between him and the curtain.
“To mother! I want my mother! I must have her all to myself, and father can’t prevent it now!” Then, to her amazement, Brooke realized that her brother’s tears were not born of grief, but of hysterical relief at release from a mental and physical bondage that had fretted and cramped and warped his very soul.
“Stay here,” she begged, “and I will bring mother to you!” Turning back, with a look that told the boy better than words that she understood his outburst, and did not brand it as foolishness, she said: “Be careful of her, for I know now that you and I must be father and mother, and do some hard thinking, and perhaps acting, in these next few weeks, for they cannot. Will you stand by me, Adam?” Then the boy did not push away the hands that rested on his shoulders, but held his sister close, awkwardly, it is true, but as he had not clung to her since the old days in the down-town house, when as a little girl she stooped over his crib to kiss him good night.