'Did I ever tell you about my sister? No, I know I haven't. I've kept it dark. But now I'm settled I want to have her to live with me. There's no one but us two, except the old uncle and aunt that brought us up. I must stick to her--and I mean to. But she's not like other girls. She's a queer one.'
He stopped, frowning a little as the recollections of Louie rushed across him, seeking for words in which to draw her. And directly he paused, Dora, who had dropped her silks again in her sudden astonishment, burst into questions. How old was his sister? Was she in Manchester? Had she a trade? Her soul was full of a warm, unexpected joy, her manner was eager--receptive. He took up his parable and told the story of his childhood and Louie's at the farm. His black eye kindled as he looked past Dora into the past--into the bosom of the Scout. Owing partly to an imaginative gift, partly to his reading habit, when he was stimulated--when he was, as it were, talking at large, trying to present a subject as a whole, to make a picture of it--he rose into ways of speech quite different from those of his class, and different from his own dialect of every day. This latent capacity for fine expression was mostly drawn out at this time by his attempts at public speaking. But to-night, in his excitement, it showed in his talk, and Dora was bewildered. Oh, how clever he was! He talked like a book--just like a book. She pushed her chair back from the silks, and sat absorbed in the pleasure of listening, environed too by the happy thought that he was making a friend of her, giving her--plain, insignificant, humble Dora Lomax--his confidence.
As for him, the more he talked the more he enjoyed talking. Never since he came to Manchester had he fallen into such a moment of unburdenment, of intimacy, or something like it, with any human being. He had talked to Ancrum and to John. But that was quite different. No man confides in a woman as he confides in a man. The touch of difference of sex gives charm and edge, even when, as was the case here, the man has no thrill whatever in his veins, and no thought of love-making in his head.
'You must have been very fond of your sister,' Dora said at last, tremulously. 'You two all alone--and no mother.'