“What did your mother say? Did she know?” Billy asked after an instant of silence.
“Oh, yes. I used to tell her a lot. It was about all the pleasure she had,—poor ma! Her life’s awfully dull. Hearing about my courting affairs keeps her sort of waked up.”
“Did she approve?”
Erminie laughed at his solemn tone. “Sure. She said it was all good practice; would teach me how to land big game when it came my way.”
Another and a longer silence awed the girl. Billy had no idea that the seconds were ticking by interminably to her; he was trying to place in his mind the Erminie just revealed to him. Her measure of life was so different from any he knew; her mother so—so impossible as a mother, repelled him as a travesty on womanhood. Yet recalling her from his few glimpses he could not help a feeling of pity mingling with his condemnation.
It was natural, though he could not have told why, that he should blame Erminie’s mother, her father, any one and every one rather than herself. She was near him. She was beautiful,—to-night with the calm moon glorifying, etherealizing her face, more than ever beautiful,—and she could not help doing things differently from—his sister, for instance, who had been so differently reared.
“Billy! Why don’t you talk to me? Don’t look off at nothing as if I were not on earth! I’m not like that now. I know you, and—”
He took her hand again in the closer clasp, and she saw a new look in his face, the look his mother saw when they discussed together the deep things of life. “Erminie, I have been trying to see your life as you see it. You know my mother is—she talks things over with me—the things a chap needs to know before he starts out for himself; and I have come to see pretty deep into—into the sort of thing that’s between us, engagements and that; what it means to one’s whole life, what it means to the race.”
“Why, Billy! Billy! Does your mother talk to you of such things?”
He smiled innocently at her vehemence. “Why not? My father is dead; who would tell me things if she didn’t?”