"Is anything wrong?"

"No, I guess not. She just doesn't seem very well sometimes."

Somehow the news filled Billy with foreboding; he could only picture some awful change. He was impatient to get home, yet, so suddenly awakened from his dream of other things, he felt like a stranger as they neared the old place. How little and lonely the house looked in the thickening dusk with the lamplight making red squares of the windows--the frost already creeping out from the edges of the panes, and the white smoke floating up from the two little chimneys. There was a fire in the parlor to-night--a sign of festivity for his homecoming.

The horse had scarcely turned in at the lane when the kitchen door opened, and in the light flooding out, Mary stood waiting with the lantern, on duty as usual. She seemed very frail and little as she hurried to meet him, very pathetic too, with her face lifted shyly, not knowing just what to expect, aching to express her love, but fearful of doing the wrong thing. They grow away from their mothers so fast, these men-children; they get so involved in things outside that the mother who stays at home trembles for the time when they will have ceased to need her.

As she bustled around in happy confusion putting the finishing touches to the supper, Billy struggled to adjust himself. The ceiling of the little room seemed very close to his head, the walls very confining as he paced about, but he noticed that the floor was scrubbed white, that the curtains had been laundered until they fairly bristled out into the room. His foot disturbed a rag mat with some yellow birds hooked into it, and when he got down to straighten it, some good fortune prompted him to observe:

"This is something new."

"Well, to think you'd notice that! I was afraid I wasn't going to get it done in time. Do you remember that plaid? It's some of the first kilts you had. The brighter pieces I've worked into a quilt for you when you have a house of your own--if you'd want it."

Billy did some quick imagining, then, as if challenging some argument against the patched quilt.

"Sure I'd want it," he said. "I should think _I would_ want it."

All evening he watched to see whether there was any ground for Jean's fears. It never occurred to him that his mother, with her tactful simplicity, might be watching him too. It was not until after Jean had gone to bed that they came nearer to an understanding. For a few minutes she knitted while he watched her and listened to the clock ticking on towards midnight. Then without looking up she asked:

"Did you have any good times this term?"

She had never inquired about his "good times" before, and he wondered, half pleased, how she knew. He felt a pleasant warmth covering his face as he answered:

"A few, toward the last."

She didn't seem to notice his embarra.s.sment. She suggested casually:

"Let's move up closer to the stove and open the door. It's as good as a fireplace when you want to talk."

He knew she hoped he would tell her more, and he wished he could, but there was nothing to tell. To repeat anything Miss Evison had said--and heaven knows he remembered every word--wouldn't give a right impression of her at all. You had to _see_ her to get any idea of what she was like. Besides there was something about her whole airy, pleasure-loving, exotic presence that didn't seem to fit in here. He liked to shut his eyes and picture her as she looked standing under the cl.u.s.ter of rose-shaded lights in the college ballroom, but when he opened them on the neat, square little kitchen, with the wood-box behind the stove and the bleary little lamp throwing shadows in the corners, the vision tortured him with the weight of something irreparably wrong. He started from his reverie, remembering that the last thing his mother had said was to the effect that the stove with the door open was as good as a fireplace.

"We were going to have a fireplace of our own, weren't we?" he began.

"You must be tired waiting for it, but it won't be long now. If I can get through next year----"

He thought he saw the patient lines draw across her face, but she smiled naturally enough.

"It will be fine to be through," she said, "but you mustn't worry about the fireplace yet. And I must tell you, too, because I have to bring myself to it, that you're a man now. I want you to have your house and your fireplace and everything just like you want it; but you mustn't go putting your mother in your plans; it isn't natural.

I'd like to see it all, and I'd be so pleased about it--to know you were happy, but young people want their own life. Only there's one thing I like to feel safe about--you'll always look out for Jean? I'm glad I can be sure about that."

And for the first time, watching her as she stared into the fire, her knitting lying forgotten in her lap, Billy saw the change he had been looking for. He came over and knelt beside her in all a boy's helplessness, tears swimming unhidden in his eyes.

"What is it?" he asked. "Jean said you were not well. What about it?"

He felt her start, but she smiled back as she had done hundreds of times before when things disturbed him.

"It's nothing," she said.

"Did you see the doctor?"

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

She had been trying ever since to forget what the doctor said.

"Oh! He said something about a specialist. They have to say something."

"You--wouldn't mind going to the specialist?"

"No; but we can't think of it now. I don't feel bad at all. You see I have everything so comfortable since you fixed the house."

Billy had the happy faculty of making his decisions quickly under pressure.

"But why can't we go to the specialist now?" he persisted quietly.

"I'm not going away again till you're better. There's the money for the next term; we'll use that. Then I'll be here. I can surely make things a little better in some ways."

"Oh, no," she protested in alarm. "You mustn't think of that. I want to see you get through. If it was the money, there's some in the bank, but----"

"You want to keep that for Jean, don't you?"

"I do want her to go on to school. I want her to learn some way of making her living. And if Jean should ever get married----"

"Oh, Jove, we'll not let her get married," he exploded with a determination born of his own limited and bitter observation. "I certainly don't believe in getting married--for girls."

It took more than Billy's inexperienced force of argument to persuade his mother that he would not be happy anywhere but at home for the next few months--that the farm was suffering for his attention anyway. When she did agree to his plan it was because she found that in some things he was absolutely immovable. He could be steered easily enough to a certain point; after that all the winds of heaven couldn't influence his course. Even the disturbing visitations of the vision of the satin-shod idol, never once suggested the idea that he might go back.

CHAPTER VI.

"_That a girl may make five dollars a day in a canning club during the summer, or a boy win a prize of one hundred dollars for feeding a baby beef, is one of the lesser advantages of the great national movement which has caught the imaginative enthusiasm of the Young Generation. It is really leading the way to a finer community life.

Many of us remember the old-fashioned chicken suppers in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the church, where the boys sat on the benches by themselves, while the girls looked pityingly and shyly across the intervening s.p.a.ce.

The club boys and girls in this great industrial college, allied artists in the creation of a better country life, are changing all this. Nothing in rural life has ever been the medium of such good times._"--_Stanley Johnson._

Dan heard of the intended visit to the city doctor with astonishment and annoyance. It wasn't like Mary to want such a thing, and he attributed it to some more of Billy's "higher life" ideas. He repeatedly unburdened his bitterness to Mary in Billy's absence, that he had been fool enough to let him go to school just to come home with his superior ways. To outsiders he had a habit of remarking: "My boy, he's in college now. Costs a good deal--an education, nowadays, but I want him to have the best I can give him."

Regarding the consulting of a special doctor he openly disapproved, on the grounds that all a doctor hung out his sign for was to get people's money. He had never had a doctor in his life and he never would have one. The best rule he knew for health was to "forget it."

Then Billy came in and he stopped. When Mary came home at night and took up the threads of her work where she had dropped them in the morning, however, he rested more easily. He inquired, apparently amused at the whole affair, when she was going back again, and she said she didn't have to go back. He reflected then, that it was only a "notion," as he had supposed, and was satisfied.

It was different with Billy. A dozen times a day he came into the house and waited around awkwardly, without asking any questions, but the most his mother ever said about the subject that troubled him was that it was "about time to take the tonic," as though the completeness of her heart's desire was a.s.sured through that proceeding. Billy had never known her to appear so happy and he knew in his heart that while she had opposed so seriously his staying at home, she felt a support in his presence. A strange dread haunted him that the time might come when she would need him still more. His first important step in the farming operations was to provoke his father's wrath by the extravagance of adding a bathroom to the house.

It was a very simple affair, built on a level with the ground floor, with a hand-force pump and cement storage tank, but it gave a satisfying touch of comfort and refinement.

Early in the New Year Billy received a scribbled note from the District Representative. "Can you help us with our short course? We have about thirty enrolled for the boys' cla.s.s, pretty good fellows practically, but most of them, I dare say, could have had all the schooling they ever got crowded into two full years. To make matters worse, we're putting on a course for the girls--cooking and the like.

A girl taking some post-graduate work at the college is coming down. I expect the thing will develop into considerable of a nuisance before we're done with it, but we'll have to see it through."

Billy's sympathies were aroused. He readjusted his plans so he could get five days a week off, went to call on the Representative and found him troubled.