Seventeen Part 17

He was alone in s.p.a.ce with Miss Pratt once more.

XVII

JANE'S THEORY

The pale end of sunset was framed in the dining-room windows, and Mr.

and Mrs. Baxter and the rehabilitated Jane were at the table, when William made his belated return from the afternoon's excursion. Seating himself, he waived his mother's references to the rain, his clothes, and probable colds, and after one laden glance at Jane denoting a grievance so elaborate that he despaired of setting it forth in a formal complaint to the Powers--he fell into a state of trance. He took nourishment automatically, and roused himself but once during the meal, a pathetic encounter with his father resulting from this awakening.

"Everybody in town seemed to be on the streets, this evening, as I walked home," Mr. Baxter remarked, addressing his wife. "I suppose there's something in the clean air after a rain that brings 'em out. I noticed one thing, though; maybe it's the way they dress nowadays, but you certainly don't see as many pretty girls on the streets as there used to be."

William looked up absently. "I used to think that, too," he said, with dreamy condescension, "when I was younger."

Mr. Baxter stared.

"Well, I'll be darned!" he said.

"Papa, papa!" his wife called, reprovingly.

"When you were younger!" Mr. Baxter repeated, with considerable irritation. "How old d' you think you are?"

"I'm going on eighteen," said William, firmly. "I know plenty of cases--cases where--" He paused, relapsing into lethargy.

"What's the matter with him?" Mr. Baxter inquired, heatedly, of his wife.

William again came to life. "I was saying that a person's age is different according to circ.u.mstances," he explained, with dignity, if not lucidity. "You take Genesis's father. Well, he was married when he was sixteen. Then there was a case over in Iowa that lots of people know about and n.o.body thinks anything of. A young man over there in Iowa that's seventeen years old began shaving when he was thirteen and shaved every day for four years, and now--"

He was interrupted by his father, who was no longer able to contain himself. "And now I suppose he's got WHISKERS!" he burst forth. "There's an ambition for you! My soul!"

It was Jane who took up the tale. She had been listening with growing excitement, her eyes fixed piercingly upon William. "He's got a beard!"

she cried, alluding not to her brother, but to the fabled Iowan. "I heard Willie tell ole Mr. Genesis about it."

"It seems to lie heavily on your mind," Mr. Baxter said to William. "I suppose you feel that in the face of such an example, your life between the ages of thirteen and seventeen has been virtually thrown away?"

William had again relapsed, but he roused himself feebly. "Sir?" he said.

"What IS the matter with him?" Mr. Baxter demanded. "Half the time lately he seems to be hibernating, and only responds by a slight twitching when poked with a stick. The other half of the time he either behaves like I-don't-know-what or talks about children growing whiskers in Iowa! Hasn't that girl left town yet?"

William was not so deep in trance that this failed to stir him. He left the table.

Mrs. Baxter looked distressed, though, as the meal was about concluded, and William had partaken of his share in spite of his dreaminess, she had no anxieties connected with his sustenance. As for Mr. Baxter, he felt a little remorse, undoubtedly, but he was also puzzled. So plain a man was he that he had no perception of the callous brutality of the words "THAT GIRL" when applied to some girls. He referred to his mystification a little later, as he sat with his evening paper in the library.

"I don't know what I said to that tetchy boy to hurt him," he began in an apologetic tone. "I don't see that there was anything too rough for him to stand in a little sarcasm. He needn't be so sensitive on the subject of whiskers, it seems to me."

Mrs. Baxter smiled faintly and shook her head.

It was Jane who responded. She was seated upon the floor, disporting herself mildly with her paint-box. "Papa, I know what's the matter with Willie," she said.

"Do you?" Mr. Baxter returned. "Well, if you make it pretty short, you've got just about long enough to tell us before your bedtime."

"I think he's married," said Jane.

"What!" And her parents united their hilarity.

"I do think he's married," Jane insisted, unmoved. "I think he's married with that Miss Pratt."

"Well," said her father, "he does seem upset, and it may be that her visit and the idea of whiskers, coming so close together, is more than mere coincidence, but I hardly think Willie is married, Jane!"

"Well, then," she returned, thoughtfully, "he's almost married. I know that much, anyway."

"What makes you think so?"

"Well, because! I KIND of thought he must be married, or anyways somep'm, when he talked to Mr. Genesis this mornin'. He said he knew how some people got married in Pennsylvania an' India, an' he said they were only seven or eight years old. He said so, an' I heard him; an' he said there were eleven people married that were only seventeen, an' this boy in Iowa got a full beard an' got married, too. An' he said Mr. Genesis was only sixteen when HE was married. He talked all about gettin'

married when you're seventeen years old, an' he said how people thought it was the best thing could happen. So I just KNOW he's almost married!"

Mr. Baxter chuckled, and Mrs. Baxter smiled, but a shade of thoughtfulness, a remote anxiety, tell upon the face of the latter.

"You haven't any other reason, have you, Jane?" she asked.

"Yes'm," said Jane, promptly. "An' it's a more reason than any! Miss Pratt calls you 'mamma' as if you were HER mamma. She does it when she talks to Willie."

"Jane!"

"Yes m, I HEARD her. An' Willie said, 'I don't know what you'll think about mother.' He said, 'I don't know what you'll think about mother,'

to Miss Pratt."

Mrs. Baxter looked a little startled, and her husband frowned. Jane mistook their expressions for incredulity. "They DID, mamma," she protested. "That's just the way they talked to each other. I heard 'em this afternoon, when Willie had papa's cane."

"Maybe they were doing it to tease you, if you were with them," Mr.

Baxter suggested.

"I wasn't with 'em. I was sailin' my boat, an' they came along, an'

first they never saw me, an' Willie looked--oh, papa, I wish you'd seen him!" Jane rose to her feet in her excitement. "His face was so funny, you never saw anything like it! He was walkin' along with it turned sideways, an' all the time he kept walkin' frontways, he kept his face sideways--like this, papa. Look, papa!" And she gave what she considered a faithful imitation of William walking with Miss Pratt. "Look, papa!

This is the way Willie went. He had it sideways so's he could see Miss.

Pratt, papa. An' his face was just like this. Look, papa!" She contorted her features in a terrifying manner. "Look, papa!"

"Don't, Jane!" her mother exclaimed.

"Well, I haf to show papa how Willie looked, don't I?" said Jane, relaxing. "That's just the way he looked. Well, an' then they stopped an' talked to me, an' Miss Pratt said, 'It's our little sister.'"

"Did she really?" Mrs. Baxter asked, gravely.

"Yes'm, she did. Soon as she saw who I was, she said, 'Why, it's our little sister!' Only she said it that way she talks--sort of foolish.

'It's our ittle sissy'--somep'm like that, mamma. She said it twice an'

told me to go home an' get washed up. An' Miss Pratt told Willie--Miss Pratt said, 'It isn't mamma's fault Jane's so dirty,' just like that.

She--"