Ranny emerged, and his mother looked at him.
"Such a sight as you are. If you could see yourself," she said.
She raised her hand and stroked, not without tenderness, his rumpled hair.
"P'r'aps—If you had a sweetheart, Ran, you'd leave off makin' a fool of your old mother."
"I wouldn't leave off kissin' her," said he.
And then, suddenly, it struck him that he had never kissed Winny. He hadn't even thought of it. He saw her fugitive, swift-darting, rebellious rather than reluctant under his embrace; and at the thought he blushed, suddenly, all over.
His mother was unaware that his kisses had become dreamy, tentative, foreboding. She said to herself: "When his time comes there'll be no holding him. But he isn't one that'll be in a hurry, Ranny isn't."
She took comfort from that thought.