IX
It was half-past one, and Mary unexpectedly appeared with tray and lighted candle, and cocoa-milk for Jack and arrowroot for Herbert. She fed Herbert with a spoon, and he swallowed, but made no sign that he understood.
“How did he get the accident?” Jack whispered.
“His horse threw him against a tree.”
“Wish Rackett would come,” whispered Jack.
Mary shook her head and they were silent.
“How old are you, Mary?” Jack asked.
“Nineteen.”
“I’m eighteen at the end of this month.”
“I know.—But I’m much older than you.”
Jack looked at her queer dark muzzle. She seemed to have a queer, humble complacency of her own.
“She”—Jack nodded his head towards Gran—“says that knuckling under makes you old.”
Mary laughed suddenly.
“Then I’m a thousand,” she said.
“What do you knuckle under for?” he asked.
She looked up at him slowly, and again something quick and hot stirred in him, from her dark, queer, humble, yet assured face.
“It’s my way,” she said, with an odd smile.
“Funny way to have,” he replied, and suddenly he was embarrassed. And he thought of Monica’s dare-devil way.
He felt embarrassed.
“I must have my own way,” said Mary, with another odd, beseeching, and yet darkly confident smile.
“Yourself is God,” thought Jack.—But he said nothing, because he felt uncomfortable.
And Mary went away with the tray and the light, and he was glad when she was gone.