“It’s a beautiful name,” said Ray. “The Spanish give it a great deal, I believe.”
“Do they? It was a name that mother liked; but she had never heard of it, although there were so many Faiths, Hopes, and Charities. She died just a little while after Peace was born, and father gave her the name.”
Ray was too young to feel the latent pathos of the lightly treated fact. “It’s a beautiful name,” he said again.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Denton, “and it’s so short you can’t nick it. There can’t be anything shorter than Peace, can there?”
“Truce,” Ray suggested, and this made them laugh.
The young girl rose and went to the window, and began looking over the plants in the pots there. Ray made bold to go and join her.
“Are you fond of flowers?” she asked gently, and with a seriousness as if she really expected him to say truly.
“I don’t know. I’ve never thought,” he answered, thinking how pretty she was, now he had her face where he could see it fully. Her hair was of the indefinite blonde tending to brown, which most people’s hair is of; her sensitive face was cast in the American mould that gives us such a high average of good looks in our women; her eyes were angelically innocent. When she laughed, her lip caught on her upper teeth, and clung there; one of the teeth was slightly broken; and both these little facts fascinated Ray. She did not laugh so much as Mrs. Denton, whose talk she let run on with a sufferance like that of an older person, though she was the younger. She and Ray stood awhile there playing the game of words in which youth hides itself from its kind, and which bears no relation to what it is feeling. The charm of being in the presence of a lovely and intelligent girl enfolded Ray like a caressing atmosphere, and healed him of all the hurts of homesickness, of solitude. Their talk was intensely personal, because youth is personal, and they were young; they thought that it dealt with the different matters of taste they touched on, but it really dealt with themselves, and not their preferences in literature, in flowers, in cats, in dress, in country and city. Ray was aware that they were discussing these things in a place very different from the parlors where he used to enjoy young ladies’ society in Midland; it was all far from the Midland expectation of his career in New York society. He recalled how, before the days of his social splendor in Midland, he had often sat and watched his own mother and sisters about their household work, which they did for themselves, while they debated the hopes and projects of his future, or let their hearts out in jest and laughter. Afterwards, he would not have liked to have this known among the fashionable people in Midland, with whom he wished to be so perfectly comme il faut.
From time to time Mrs. Denton dropped the cat out of her lap, and ran out to pull the wire which operated the latch of the street door; and then Ray heard her greeting some comer and showing him into the front room, where presently he heard him greeting her father. At last there was a sound below as of some one letting himself in with a latch-key, and then came the noises of the perambulator wheels bumping from step to step as it was pulled up. Mrs. Denton sat still, and kept on talking to Ray, but her sister went out to help her husband; and reappeared with a sleeping twin in her arms, and carried it into the room adjoining. The husband, with his pale face flushed from his struggle with the perambulator, came in with the other, and when he emerged from the next room again, Mrs. Denton introduced him to Ray.
“Oh, yes,” he said; “I saw you with Mr. Kane.” He sat down a moment at the other window, and put his bare head out for the air. “It has grown warm,” he said.