"Oh, less than that." And their first confidence was established.
"Twenty," thought Dave to himself. "Reenie must be about twenty now."
"And I was five when—when Jack died," she went on. "Jack was my brother, you know. He was seven, and a great boy for his daddy. Most boys run to their mother with their hurts, but Jack was different. When father was at the office Jack would save up his little hurts until evening… Well, we were playing, and I stood on the car tracks, signalling the motorman, to make him ring his bell. On came the car, with the bell clanging, and the man in blue looking very cross. Jack must have thought I was waiting too long, for he suddenly rushed on the track to pull me off." She stopped, and sat looking at the rushing water.
"I heard him cry, 'Oh Daddy, Daddy,' above the screech of the brakes," she continued, in a dry voice.
"Sorrow is a strange thing," she went on, after a pause. "I don't pretend to understand, but it seems to have its place in life. I fancy this would soon be a pretty degenerate world if there were no sorrow in it. I have been told that sometimes fruit trees refuse to bear until they have met with adversity. Then the gardener bores a hole in them, or something like that, and, behold, next season they bear. Sounds silly, but they say it's a fact. I guess it's natural law. Well—" She paused again, and when she spoke it was in a lower, more confidential note.
"I shouldn't tell you this, Dave. I shouldn't know it myself. But before that things hadn't been, well, just as good as they might in our home… They've been different since."
The shock of her words brought him upright. To him it seemed that Mr. and Mrs. Duncan were the ideal father and mother. It was impossible to associate them with a home where things "hadn't been just as good as they might." But her half confession left no room for remark.
"Mother told me," she went on, after a long silence, and without looking at him. "A few years ago, 'If some one had only told me, when I was your age,' she said."
"Why do you tell me this?" he suddenly demanded.
"Did you ever feel that you just had to tell someone?"