Ruth made a gesture of remonstrance, but the boyish partisanship brought the tears she had until then been able to hold back.
Ted rose. And then he hesitated, as if not wanting to leave it like this. "Well, Ruth, I can tell you one thing," he said gently, a little bashfully; "with all Cy's grand talk about the wrong done mother and father, neither of them ever loved him the way they loved you."
"Oh, _did_ they, Ted?" she cried, and all the held back feeling broke through, suffusing her. "They _did_?--in spite of everything? Tell me about that, Ted! Tell me about it!"
"Mother used to talk a lot to me," he said. "She was always coming into my room and talking to me about you."
"Oh, _was_ she, Ted?" she cried again, feeling breaking over her face in waves. "She _did_ talk about me? What did she say? Tell me!"
"Just little things, mostly. Telling about things you had said and done when you were a kid; remembering what you'd worn here and there--who you'd gone with. Oh,--you know; just little things.
"Of course," he went on, Ruth leaning forward, hanging on his words, "I was a good deal of a kid then; she didn't talk to me much about the--serious part of it. Maybe that was the reason she liked to talk to me--because she could just talk about the little things--old things. Though once or twice--"
"Yes, Ted?" she breathed, as he paused there.
"Well, she did say things to me, too. I remember once she said, 'It wasn't like Ruth. Something terrible happened. She didn't know what she was doing.'"
Ruth's hands were pressed tight together; unheeded tears were falling on them.
"And she used to worry about you, Ruth. When it was cold and she'd come into my room with an extra cover she'd say--'I wish I knew that my girl was warm enough tonight.'"
At that Ruth's face went down in her hands and she was sobbing.
"I don't know what I'm talking like this for!" muttered the boy angrily. "Making you feel so bad!"
She shook her head, but for a little could not look up. Then she choked: "No, I want to know. Never mind how it hurts, I want to know." And then, when she had controlled herself a little more she said, simply: "I didn't know it was like that. I didn't know mother felt--like that."
"She'd start to write to you, and then lots of times she wouldn't seem to know how. She wanted to write to you lots more than she did. But I don't know, Ruth, mother was queer. She seemed sort of bewildered. She--wasn't herself. She was just kind of powerless to do anything about things. She'd come in this room a lot. Sit in here by herself. One of the last days mother was around she called me in here and she had that dress you wore to Edith Lawrence's wedding spread out on the bed and was--oh, just kind of fussing with it. And the reason she called me in was that she wanted to know if I remembered how pretty you looked in it that night."