“Well, I’m ashamed of you.”
“Why do you mind them so much, Ellen?”
“You don’t have to ask me why.”
“But I do, because my father didn’t think they were bad. He only lectured me for show!” He chuckled at the recollection.
“Ah, Potter, your father is a grown man! Men do lots of things that you shouldn’t think about. You’re just a child. Those pictures! What’s the good of them anyway? Nice people wouldn’t have them around.”
“Some people would!” he declared stoutly. “They’re beautiful, or my father wouldn’t have kept them ... and the one I’ve just finished is the best, oh, lots the best I’ve done!”
She sensed a strain of profound unhappiness in his voice, and all her instincts flew to soothe the hurt.
“I don’t mean to be hard on you, Potter,” she said. “You worry me, that’s all. I can’t see why you bother about these things that other people never think of.”
“Aw,” he said, “never mind, Ellen. I guess I don’t know what I want. It’s no fun being a boy when you’d like to be a man.”
They both fell silent, listening to the trees chattering overhead like live things. The breeze that stirred them was growing chill, and Potter, responding to the kindlier tone of his companion, moved closer to her. His last words and this unconscious movement of affection touched her. She put a rough, friendly hand on his arm, and they sat there in silence for a time. It was he who broke it....