"You would not talk that way, Madge, if you knew my dear mother," he said, quietly. "There is nothing in her life she loves better than me. She doesn't want me to be a painter because--" He stopped, fearing she might not understand his answer.
"Go on--why not?" The laugh had faded out of her voice now, and a tone almost of defiance had taken its place.
"She says it is not the profession of a gentleman," he answered, sadly. "I do not agree with her, but she thinks so, and nothing can shake her."
"If those are her opinions, I wonder what she would think of ME?" There was a slight irritation in her voice--somehow she always became irritable when Oliver spoke of his mother. She was ashamed of it, but it was true.
All his anger was gone now. Whatever opinion the world might have on any number of things there could be but one opinion of Madge. "She would LOVE you, little girl," he burst out as he laid his hand on her arm--the first time he had ever touched her with any show of affection. "You'd make her love you. She never saw anybody like you before, and she never will. That you are an artist wouldn't make any difference. It's not the same with you.
You're a woman."
The girl's eyes again sought the woodpecker. It was stabbing away with all its might, driving its beak far into the yielding bark. It seemed in some way to represent her own mood. After a moment's thought she said thoughtfully as she rested her head on the edge of the slant:
"Ollie, what is a gentleman?" She knew, she thought, but she wanted him to define it.
"My father is one," he said, positively, "--and so is yours," and he looked inquiringly into her face.
"That depends on your standard. I don't know your father, but I do mine, and from what you have told me about yours I think they are about as different as two men can be. Answer my question--what is a gentleman?" She was leaning over a little, and tucking a chip under her toes to keep the water away from her shoes. Her eyes sought his again.
"A gentleman, Madge--why, you know what a gentleman is. He is a man well born, well educated, and well bred. That's the standard at home --at least, that's my mother's. Father's standard is the same, only he puts it in a different way. He says a gentleman is a man who tolerates other people's mistakes and who sympathizes with other people's troubles."
"Anything else?" She was searching his face now. There were some things she wanted to settle in her own mind.
"I don't think of anything else, Madge, dear--do you?" He was really dismissing the question. His thoughts were on something else--the way her hair curled from under her worsted cap and the way her pink ears nestled close to her head, especially the little indents at each corner of her mouth. He liked their modelling.
"And so according to your mother's and father's ideas, and those of all your aristocratic people at home, Hank here could not be a gentleman if he tried?"
The idea was new to Oliver. He had become conscious now. What had gotten into Margaret to-day!
"Hank?--no, certainly not. How could he?"
"By BEING a gentleman, Mr. Aristocrat. Not in clothes, mind you--nor money, nor furniture, nor wines, nor carriages, but in HEART. Think a moment, Ollie," and her eyes snapped. "Hank finds a robin that has tumbled out of its nest, and spends half a day putting it back. Hank follows you up the brook and sees you try to throw a fly into a pool, and he knows just how awkwardly you do it, for he's the best fisherman in the woods--and yet you never see a smile cross his face, nor does he ever speak of it behind your back--not even to me. Hank walks across Moose Hillock to find old Jonathan Gordon to tell him he has some big trout in Loon Pond, so that the old man can have the fun of catching them and selling them afterward to the new hotel in the Notch.
He has walked twenty-four miles when he gets back.
Do these things make Hank a gentleman, or not?"
"Then you don't believe in Sir Walter Raleigh, Miss Democrat, simply because he was a lord?"
"Yes--but I always thought he wore his old cloak that day on purpose, so he could be made an earl."
And a ripple of laughter escaped her lips.
Oliver laughed too, sprang to his feet, and held out his hands so as to lift her up. None of these fine-drawn distinctions really interested him--certainly not on this day, when he was so happy. Why, he wondered, should she want to discuss theories and beliefs and creeds, with the beautiful forest all about and the sky breaking overhead?
"Well, you've walked over mine many a time, Miss Queen Elizabeth, and you haven't decorated me yet, nor made me an earl nor anything else for it, and I'm not going to forgive you either," and he rose to his feet. "Look! Madge, look!" he cried, and sprang out into the path, pointing to the sunshine bursting through the trees--the storm had passed as suddenly as it had come. "Isn't it glorious!
Come here quick! Don't wait a minute. I should try to get that with Naples yellow and a little chrome--what do you think?" he asked when she stood beside him, half closing his eyes, to get the effect the better.
Margaret looked at him curiously for a moment.
She did not answer. "I cannot fasten his mind on anything in which I am interested," she said to herself, with a sigh, "nor shall I ever overcome these prejudices which seem to be part of his very life."
She paused a moment and an expression of pain passed over her face.
"Pale cadmium would be better," she said, quietly, with a touch of indifference in her tone, and led the way out of the forest to the main road.
