“No, I do not know anyone by that name,” said Lois a little wearily.
“Then you’d ought to; Miss Dosia, here, she’d ought to. He’s a man. Young, too, just the kind she’d like. He’s related to the Wilmots, Judge Wilmot’s family; they lived down our way, Miss Dosia, before you came. His folks were mighty fine people in the South, but they lost all their money. Kind of wearin’ to hear that, ain’t it? I get tired of it myself. I know a lot of splendid families who have lost all their money—or are a-losin’ it. It kind of tones me up now when I hear of anybody that’s risin’ into the ranks of the solid rich; makes it seem sort of possible to walk on somethin’ that isn’t a down grade.”
“How about Mr. Girard?” asked Dosia.
“Oh, well, he’s all right. He’s on an up grade, if anybody ever was—now. But I wouldn’t want a boy of mine to go through what he has, though it’s made him what he is. His mother was left a widow after they’d moved ’way out West. She was a delicate woman, and had a hard time of it struggling along; most of her folks were dead, and I don’t know that she wrote to the rest of ’em. I don’t know but what her mind got sort of wanderin’ when she fell sick. She died at a little town in Indiana, on her way back East, and there wasn’t anyone to look after the child. He was bound out to a man on a farm; he was ten years old then, and he stayed there till he was thirteen. The cussed hound used to beat him with a strap, nights when he was in liquor. Many a time the poor little chap, brought up tender by a lovin’ mother, used to crawl into the barn and hide in a corner of the hay near the dumb beasts and cry his heart out till he got quiet. He told me once—Girard, he hardly ever talks about himself, but this was a time when we were stalled in a snow-storm—he told me that he supposed it was because of the Christmas story you read in the Bible that he felt that if he could only get into the barn in the hay by the dumb beasts he was a little nearer to her.”
“How did he get away?” asked Dosia. She longed pitifully to take the boy’s little hand and kiss it, and hold it against her cheek, although the hurt had been over so long ago.
“Oh, he lit out when he was about thirteen. He didn’t tell me the whole of it. He sold papers in New York, and went to night-school; and next he went to college and rowed in the crew. He met up with some of his own people, too. Then he was war correspondent in Cuba—I guess some of the wounded know what he did for them. Later he went to South America on some government business; he’s a personal friend of the President. He’s young, too, not more’n twenty-eight. He’s bound to get ahead at whatever he sets himself to. But he’s got an awful tender heart; I saw him nearly kill a big Swede once that was wallopin’ a sick horse. What you laughin’ at, Miss Dosia? I reckon we’re all of us made two ways. Shucks! it isn’t that time, is it?” He turned with startled amaze to look behind him at the clock that was striking.
“I’m afraid it is,” affirmed Lois.
“Then I’ve got to make tracks to catch that eleven-fifteen. ’Tisn’t manners to eat and run, I know, but—” He had risen and was swiftly putting on his coat in the hall. “Thank you, Miss Dosia, I guess I can get into this best by myself; I know where to humor the sleeve-linin’. Is that my hat? Mrs. Alexander, I think a mighty lot of your hospitality; I do so. I—” He was loping down the path already, his long legs making preternatural shadows on the snow in the moonlight. Dosia called after him mischievously, “You’d better wait until the twelve-three,” before she shut the door. The momentary rush of cold air was as invigorating, as wholesome and clear in the atmosphere of the lamp-lit, evening-heated room, as Mr. Cater’s presence had been.
She went to her room, leaving Lois down-stairs clearing away the remains of the little supper, her offer of assistance having been refused. Lois wished to be there alone when her husband came in, experience having taught her that he was much more apt to be communicative at that time than at any other. Fresh from a social experience, and feeling still the interest of it, he would like to talk of it; by morning it would have relapsed so deeply into his inner consciousness that it would take a sort of conversational derrick on the part of his wife to bring up any reminiscence whatever.
He came in now, fresh, eager, and alert, pleased and surprised to find traces of a convivial evening, when he had expected to be late.