"Your mother mend socks!" and Helen started so suddenly as to run the point of her darning needle a long way into her thumb, the wound bringing a stream of blood which she tried to wipe away with her handkerchief.
"Bind it tightly around. Let me show you, please," Mark said, and ere she was aware of what she was doing Helen was quietly permitting the young man to wind her handkerchief around her thumb which he held in his hand, pressing it until the blood ceased flowing, and the sharp pain had abated.
Perhaps Mark Ray liked holding that small, warm hand, even though it were not as white and soft as Juno's; at all events he did hold it until Helen drew it from him with a quick, sudden motion, telling him it would now do very well, and she would not trouble him. Mark did not look as if he had been troubled, but went back to his seat and took up the conversation just where the needle had stopped it.
"My mother did not always mend herself, but she caused it to be done, and sometimes helped. I remember she used to say a woman should know how to do everything pertaining to a household, and she carried out her theory in the education of my sister."
"Have you a sister?" Helen asked, now really interested, and listening intently while Mark told her of his only sister, Julia, now Mrs. Ernst, whose home was in New Orleans, though she at present was in Paris, and his mother was there with her. "After Julia's marriage, nine years ago, mother went to live with her," he said, "but latterly, as the little Ernsts increase so fast, she wishes for a more quiet home, and this winter she is coming to New York to keep house for me."
Helen thought she might like Mark's mother, who, he told her, had been twice married, and was now Mrs. Banker, and a widow. She must be different from Mrs. Cameron; and Helen let herself down to another degree of toleration for the man whose mother taught her daughter to mend the family socks. Still there was about her a chilling reserve, which Mark wondered at, for it was not thus that ladies were accustomed to receive his advances. He did not guess that Wilford Cameron stood between him and Helen's good opinion; but when, after the family came in, the conversation turned upon Katy and her life in New York, the secret came out in the sharp, caustic mariner with which she spoke of New York and its people.