How did he come by it? Sydney felt he could not in a thousand years acquire such a manner; and at the same time it seemed just then the one thing on earth worth having. Poor Sydney did not know that many boys, even some reared in comfortable homes, are harassed in their years of development by a similar diffidence. He thought it was caused entirely by his lack of training.
He could see that Max won them all, especially Mr. Wright, with whom he talked intelligently on current topics; and Mrs. Wright when they touched upon music, as well as Billy’s mother when she asked of Max’s own, and he replied that she was dead. Sydney could remember his own mother only dimly. He had not such a passionate love for her as he detected in Max’s low reply that was in no different tone from his other words; yet its indefinable intensity told volumes about his heart feeling.
After dinner Billy’s sister carried Max off to the piano and they had what Billy called an orgy of music, neither paying much attention to the rest in the room.
Mr. Wright went to his den, and Mrs. Bennett disappeared, leaving Sydney alone with Billy. They settled among the cushions on a window seat where twinkling lights on the Sound below, as well as sharp little whistles, revealed the coming and going of many small steamers, part of the Mosquito Fleet that connects a thousand miles of Sound shore with the metropolis, the City of Green Hills.
The moon sent a silver track across the dark water, and the distant, fir-fringed shores outlined dimly against the starlit west seemed the shadowy ramparts of fairyland.
Probably Billy appreciated the scene more deeply than Sydney, yet he saw it often, and consequently was the first to speak.
“What’s the trick you want me to turn for you with Bess?”
At the telephone asking this favor from Billy had seemed a little thing; now that the moment had come it was all but impossible. Yet he had delayed too long. It was nearly a month since the night of Max’s coming, the night when Sydney had determined to “do something for Ida”; but he had let the days pass in inaction. This moment he was in for it.
“It’s about Ida Jones. Do you know her?”