“Bind it tightly round. Let me show you, please,” Mark said, and ere she was aware of what she was doing, Helen was quietly permitting the young man to wind her handkerchief around her thumb which he held in his hand, pressing it until the blood ceased flowing, and the sharp pain had abated.
Perhaps Mark Ray liked holding that small, warm hand, even though it were not as white and soft as Juno’s; at all events he did hold it until Helen drew it from him with a quick, sudden motion, telling him it would do very well, and she would not trouble him. Mark did not look as if he had been troubled, but went back to his seat and took up the conversation just where the needle had stopped it.
“My mother did not always mend herself, but she caused it to be done, and sometimes helped. I remember she used to say a woman should know how to do everything pertaining to a household, and she carried out her theory in the education of my sister.”
“Have you a sister?” Helen asked, now really interested, and listening intently while Mark told her of his only sister Julia, now Mrs. Ernst, whose home was in New Orleans, though she at present was in Paris, and his mother was there with her. “After Julia’s marriage, nine years ago, mother went to live with her,” he said, “but latterly, as the little Ernsts increase so fast, she wishes for a more quiet home, and this winter she is coming to New York to keep house for me.”
Helen thought she might like Mark’s mother, who, he told her, had been twice married, and was now Mrs. Banker, and a widow. She must be different from Mrs. Cameron; and Helen let herself down to another degree of toleration for the man whose mother taught her daughter to mend the family socks. Still there was about her a reserve, which Mark wondered at, for it was not thus that ladies were accustomed to receive his advances. He did not guess that Wilford Cameron stood between him and Helen’s good opinion; but when, after the family came in, the conversation turned upon Katy and her life in New York, the secret came out in the sharp, caustic manner with which she spoke of New York and its people.
“It’s Will and the Camerons,” Mark thought, blaming Helen less than he would have done, if he, too, had not known something of the Cameron pride.
It was a novel position in which Mark found himself that night, an inmate of a humble farm-house, where he could almost touch the ceiling with his hand, and where his surroundings were so different from what he had been accustomed to; but, unlike Wilford Cameron, he did not wish himself away, nor feel indignant at Aunt Betsy’s old-fashioned ways, or Uncle Ephraim’s grammar. He noticed Aunt Betsy’s oddities, it is true, and noticed Uncle Ephraim’s grammar; but the sight of Helen sitting there, with so much dignity and self-respect, made him look beyond all else, straight into her open face and clear brown eyes, where there was nothing obnoxious or distasteful. Her language was correct, her manner, saving a little stiffness, lady-like and refined: and Mark enjoyed his situation as self-invited guest, making himself so agreeable that Uncle Ephraim forgot his hour of retiring, nor discovered his mistake until, with a loud yawn, Aunt Betsy told him that it was half-past nine, and she was “desput sleepy.”
Owing to Helen’s influence there had been a change of the olden custom, and instead of the long chapter, through which Uncle Ephraim used to plod so wearily, there were now read the Evening Psalms. Aunt Betsy herself joined in the reading, which she mentally classed with the “quirks,” but confessed to herself that it “was most as good as the Bible.”
As there were only Prayer Books enough for the family, Helen, in distributing them, purposely passed Mark by, thinking he might not care to join them. But when the verse came round to Helen he quickly drew his chair near to hers, and taking one side of her book, performed his part, while Helen’s face grew red as the blossoms in her hair, and her hand, so near to Mark’s, trembled visibly.
“A right nice chap, and not an atom stuck up,” was Aunt Betsy’s mental comment, and then, as he often will do, Satan followed the saintly woman even to her knees, making her wonder if “Mr. Ray hadn’t some notion after Helen.” She hoped not, for she meant that Morris should have Helen, “though if ’twas to be it was, and she should not go agin it;” and while Aunt Betsy thus settled the case, Uncle Ephraim’s prayer ended, and the conscience-smitten woman arose from her knees with the conviction that “the evil one had got the better of her once,” mentally asking pardon for her wandering thoughts and promising to do better.