Ruth smiled proudly as she made her verbal explanations. "Thank you very much, but Erskine says I am to go with him; he cannot think of trusting me to myself; he has taken care of me for a long time, you know." There was not a thought of sarcasm in this suggestion. She knew that the assumption of authority sat well on her handsome son who could look down on her from his splendid height; it seemed quite in keeping with his appearance and character that he was going to take his mother with him in order to take care of her.
The scheme had worked well. He "took" his mother and took excellent care of her, and incidentally she did much, of course, for his comfort, and they were happy. Early in his college career she had sometimes overheard explanations like this:—
"No, boys, I can't join you to-night. You see, I have my mother with me and I feel bound to give her what time I can spare. It will never do to have her feel lonely and deserted after bringing her away out here among strangers, on purpose to take care of her."
It was all very pleasant. But she had learned something from those letters and that volume of advice. She tried steadily not to dominate her son; indeed, so far as a carefully-watched-over mother could, she effaced herself, or tried to. Erskine had no thought of such a thing, and was openly and serenely happy in his mother's society.
"I pity the other fellows," was a phrase often on his lips. "Most of them live in pokey rooms all by themselves or with only each other; no woman to speak to but a cross-grained hostess, and nothing homelike anywhere; while here it is almost as nice as being at home."
And he would glance complacently around the handsomely furnished suite of rooms that showed everywhere the touch of his mother's hand. But of course there were evenings that were not spent with his mother. It was in connection with one of these that she reached that distinct milestone of which mention has been made. Erskine in explaining about it had shown an unaccountable embarrassment.
"It is just a kind of spread that one of the boys is getting up in honor of his sister; she has come to spend the winter with him. It is rather new business to him and I have promised to help him through, so I must go early and stay late—not very late, though. Parker's landlady will look out for that; she is one of the grim and surly kind. I should have the shivers if I had to get up a spread, with her in charge. Yes, Parker is the curly-headed one that you don't quite fancy. I don't know why, he is a good fellow. Haven't I spoken before of his sister? She has been here for three weeks. Didn't you notice Parker last Wednesday at the concert? He sat just across from us and had her with him. Yes, she is at his boarding-house, and the spread is in his room. He has the downstairs room, mother, in fact it is the back parlor; there is a folding-bed that does duty as a sort of sideboard during the day. It is very nice, really. One wouldn't imagine that there was a bed anywhere around. Parker is one of the fellows who has a good deal of money, I think, but not the culture that generally goes with such a condition. Sometimes I fancy that his father must have made his money lately and suddenly; but, of course, I don't know. Still, everything is very nice and proper about this spread; of course you know that, or I wouldn't be in it. The sister? Oh, yes, she is young—younger than Parker. He is older than most of us, you know. No, there are no women in the house except the landlady and her sister, a maiden lady. That's a pity; it must be rather lonely for Ma—for Miss Parker."
The color flamed in his face and he laughed in an embarrassed way and spoke apologetically:—
"Parker has 'Mamie' so constantly on his tongue that the rest of us are in danger of forgetting. He is very proud of his sister. Why, no, mother, of course he could not very well make any other arrangement; why should he? Of course it is a perfectly proper thing for a young lady to be in her brother's boarding-house. She isn't obliged to have any more to do with the other young men than she chooses. Parker wants her to stay with him all winter. Their father is a mining man, and he and his wife have gone to the mountains somewhere among the mines to look up some more of their money, I suppose."
He spoke almost contemptuously; for some reason the evidence of abundance of money in the Parker family seemed to annoy him. He went on quickly with his labored explanations:—