Mrs. Carter sat down the candle on a shelf and raised the window: "Is that you Billy?" she asked, and there were tears in her voice.
Billy had a brief appalling revelation of Mothers the world over. Did
all Mothers--women--act like that when they were fools? Fools is
what he called them in his mind. Yet in spite of himself and his rage
and trembling he felt a sudden tenderness for this crumply, tired,
ghastly little pink rimmed mother, apprehensive of the worst as was
plain to see. Billy recalled like a flash the old man at the Blue Duck
saying, "I'm sorry for his ma. I used to go to school with her." He
looked at the faded face with the pink rims and trembling lips and had
a vision of a brown haired little girl at a desk, and old Si Appleby a
teasing boy in the desk opposite. It came over him that some day he
would be an old man somewhere telling how he went to school--! And then
he asked: "Where's Mark? Up yet?"
She shook her head apprehensively, withholdingly.
Billy had a thought that perhaps some one had beat him to it with news
from the Blue Duck, but he put it from him. There were tears in her
eyes and one was straggling down between the crimples of her cheeks
where it looked as if she had lain on the folds of her handkerchief all
night. There came a new tenderness in his voice. This was Mark's
mother, and this was the way she felt. Well, of course it was silly,
but she was Mark's mother.
"Man up the mountain had n'accident. I thought Mark ud he'p. He always
does," explained Billy awkwardly with a feeling that he ought to
account for his early visit.
"Yes, of course, Mark would like to help!" purred his mother comforted
at the very thought of every day life and Mark going about as usual,
"But--" and the apprehension flew into her eyes again, "He isn't home.
Billy, he hasn't come home at all last night! I'm frightened to death!
I've sat up all night! I can't think what's happened--! There's so many
hold-ups and Mark will carry his money loose in his trousers pocket--!"
Billy blanched but lied beautifully up to the occasion even as he would
have liked to have somebody lie for him to Aunt Saxon: "Aw! That's nothing! Doncha worry. He tol' me he might have t'stay down
t'Unity all night. There's a fella down there that likes him a lot, an'
they had somekinduva blowout in their church last night. He mightuv had
ta take some girl home out of town ya know, and stayed over with the
fella."