“Yes, mother,” replied Anderson. He distinctly heard a soft sigh from the window, and his heart smote him a little. He realized dimly that a matter like this might seem important to a woman. Presently he heard a soft flop of draperies, and his mother stood large and white and mild behind him.
“They are nearly all gone who are going, I think?” said she, interrogatively.
Anderson looked at his watch, holding it towards the light of the moon, which was just coming above the horizon. The daylight had paled with suddenness like a lamp burning low from lack of oil. “Yes; they must be all gone now,” said he. “It is eight o'clock.”
He rose and placed a chair for his mother, and she settled into it.
“I thought I would not come out here while the people were passing,” said she. “I have my matinée on, and I am never quite sure that it is dress enough for the porch.”
Anderson looked at the lacy, beribboned thing which his mother wore over her black silk skirt, and said it was very pretty.
“Yes, it is,” said she, “but I am never sure that it is just the thing to be out of my own room in. I suppose the dresses to-night will be very pretty. Miss Carroll ought to make a lovely bride. She is a very pretty girl, and so is her sister. I dare say their dresses will be prettier than anything of the kind ever seen in Banbridge.”
There was an indescribable wistfulness in Mrs. Anderson's voice. Large and rather majestic woman that she was, she spoke like a disappointed child, and her son looked at her with wonder.
“I don't understand how a woman can care so much about seeing pretty dresses,” he said, not unkindly, but with a slight inflection of amused scorn.
“No,” said his mother, “I don't suppose you can, dear. I don't suppose any man can.” And it was as if she regarded him from feminine heights. At that moment the longing, never quite stilled in her breast, for a daughter, a child of her own kind, who would have understood her, who would have gone with her to this wedding, and been to the full as disappointed as she was to have missed it, was strong upon her. She was very fond of her son, but at the moment she saw him with alien eyes. “No, dear, I don't suppose you can understand,” she repeated; “you are a man.”