She raised her head a little higher and fixed her eyes, in their puffy sockets, on him in a sort of groping wonder.
"Why, what has got into you?" she asked, stupidly, and all at once he seemed older to her, older and more dignified, more business-like, more like his dead father, to whom she had been flagrantly untrue.
"Common sense, I reckon," he jerked out. "If I've been a fool I don't always have to stay one. I'm going to need money—for myself, for my own self, do you understand? I—I don't intend to live on here always, either. I'll be of age before long. I've thought it all over. I'm willing to set aside a reasonable amount to help you along, but I'm done with these big drafts on me."
"John, what ails you?" There was a touch of shrinking fear in the almost childish appeal. "You have never talked like this before."
"Well, I might as well begin," he sniffed. "You have to be told. I've seen how other folks live away from here, and I want a change. I'm sick of it all—you and Jane and the gang you hang out with."
"John Trott," his mother gasped, "you sha'n't talk to me this way. I won't stand it."
"Well, then, think it all over," he answered. "I know my business. You can look out for yours. I know when I've had enough, and I have had enough."
He turned and left her. She heard him in his room, the sordid cubbyhole he had occupied since he was a child, and somehow now she pictured its narrow confines and condition as being unsuited to the new and unaccountable dignity into which he had grown in his short absence. What could it mean? What?
She got up, slid her silk-dressed feet into a dainty pair of black-satin slippers, drew her wrapper about her, and went into Jane Holder's darkened room.
"Are you asleep, Jane?" she inquired, half timidly.