Ruth Erskine's Son

by Pansy

Mamie's response was in too low a tone to penetrate into the next room, but it was followed by explosive giggles from both talkers. Meanwhile, the caller's face was glowing, not only with shame for them, but with indignation. What might not those coarse girls—she was sure they were both coarse—be saying about her son!

The door opened at last and a mass of fluffy hair entered; behind which peeped a pert little face with pink cheeks and bright, keen eyes.

The girl was dressed in the extreme of the prevailing style,—quite too much dressed for morning, though the material of which her garments were made was flimsy and cheap-looking. Plainly if she had money she had not learned how to spend it to advantage. Still the clothes were worn with an air that hinted at her ability to learn how to play the fine lady if she were given the opportunity.

Her manner to her caller suggested a curious mixture of timidity and bravado. She chattered incessantly and showered slang words and phrases about her freely; yet all the while kept up a nervous little undertone of movement and manner that showed she was not at ease.

"Oh, indeed, she was having an awfully good time. Brother Jim was doing the best he could to give her a lark. She had never been much away from home and they lived in a stupid little village where there was nothing going on. Oh, Jim was an elegant brother; he wanted her to stay all winter and look after his buttons and things."

"I expect you have heard a good deal about Jim, haven't you, from your son? Only he calls him 'Parker' instead of Jim; the boys all do that, you know. It's 'Parker,' and 'Burnham,' and all the rest of them. Ain't it funny, instead of using their first names? I s'pose that's the college of it; but your son has such a pretty name it seems a pity not to use it. Don't you think Erskine is an awful pretty name? I do. It has such an aristocratic sound. Ma says I ought to have been born with a silver spoon in my mouth, I like aristocratic things so well. Not but what we've got money enough;"—this with an airy toss of the frizzed head. Then, in a confidential tone: "But I may as well own to you that it didn't pan out until a little while ago."

Mrs. Burnham, as she took her thoughtful way home, too much exhausted with this effort to think of making another call, studied in vain the problem of her son's enthralment.

The girl was pretty, certainly, with a kind of garish, unfinished beauty, not unlike that of a pert doll; and her chatter, if one could divest one's self of all thought of interest in the chatterer save in the way of a moment's diversion, was rather entertaining than otherwise, when it was not too much mixed with slang; but what Erskine, her cultivated and always fastidious son, could find in the empty little brain to attract him was beyond the mother's comprehension. But he must have been pronounced in his attentions. Had she not been reported as having called to see if the girl would "do"? Ruth's sensitive face flushed over the memory. Should she tell that to Erskine? What should she tell to Erskine? How should the place and the interview and her impressions of the entire scene be described? It required serious thought. The more the mother considered it, the more sure she felt that much of Erskine's future might turn on the way in which she, his mother, conducted herself just now. She puzzled long and reached no clearer conclusion than that until she saw her way clearer she would take no steps at all, and would be entirely noncommittal in her statements. This she found hard; Erskine was curious, more curious than she had ever before known him to be. He cross-questioned her closely as to her call, and was openly regretful, almost annoyed, at her having so little to tell. In the course of the next few days the watching mother, who yet did not wish to appear to watch, knew of at least two social functions that included her son and Miss Parker. One was a sleigh-ride which fell on the evening of the mid-week prayer-meeting in the church they were attending. Erskine had been scrupulous in his attendance on this meeting, declining for it social and business engagements alike, sometimes to his own inconvenience.

"There was no use in compromising about these matters," he said. "Busy people can find something important to detain them every week of their lives if they once admit an exception. The only way is to set one's face like a flint and march ahead."

But he came to her with profuse apologies for this exception; Parker had planned, without knowing anything about the prayer-meeting; he had not been brought up to think of such things, and it was going to embarrass him very much if he declined. He wouldn't have had it happen in this way for a great deal, and he should take care to let Parker know in the future that Thursday evening belonged to his mother and to no one else. He himself arranged for her to have agreeable company to and from the church, and she had grace to be sweet and cheerfully acquiescent in all his plans. Nevertheless she owned, quite to herself, that she felt in a strange, new sense alone. She was more straitened in her praying that evening than she had been for months, almost for years. There was a miserable undertone question hovering about each petition: Could it be possible that she must teach herself to pray for Mamie Parker, not as a passing acquaintance but as one of her very own? and could she learn such a lesson? She had by no means settled it that such a catastrophe must come upon them, but she could not keep down her forebodings.