Tembarom's eyes rested on her in a thoughtfulness openly touched with affection. He put out his hand and patted hers two or three times in encouraging sympathy.
“Say,” he said frankly, “I just believe every woman that's the real thing'd like to have a little boy--or a little girl--or a little something or other. That's why pet cats and dogs have such a cinch of it. And there's men that's the same way. It's sort of nature.”
“He had such a high spirit and such pretty ways,” she said again. “One of his pretty ways was remembering to do little things to make one comfortable, like thinking of giving one a cushion or a buffet for one's feet. I noticed it so much because I had never seen boys or men wait upon women. My own dear papa was used to having women wait upon him--bring his slippers, you know, and give him the best chair. He didn't like Jem's ways. He said he liked a boy who was a boy and not an affected nincompoop. He wasn't really quite just.” She paused regretfully and sighed as she looked back into a past doubtlessly enriched with many similar memories of “dear papa.” “Poor Jem! Poor Jem!” she breathed softly.
Tembarom thought that she must have felt the boy's loss very much, almost as much as though she had really been his mother; perhaps more pathetically because she had not been his mother or anybody's mother. He could see what a good little mother she would have made, looking after her children and doing everything on earth to make them happy and comfortable, just the kind of mother Ann would make, though she had not Ann's steady wonder of a little head or her shrewd farsightedness. Jem would have been in luck if he had been her son. It was a darned pity he hadn't been. If he had, perhaps he would not have died young.
“Yes,” he answered sympathetically, “it's hard for a young fellow to die. How old was he, anyhow? I don't know.”
“Not much older than you are now. It was seven years ago. And if he had only died, poor dear! There are things so much worse than death.”
“Awful disgrace is worse,” she faltered. She was plainly trying to keep moisture out of her eyes.
“Did he get into some bad mix-up, poor fellow?” If there had been anything like that, no wonder it broke her up to think of him.