His stepmother moved to the end of the settee and made a place for him at her side.  “Lindsay,” she said, under cover of the talk and laughter, and speaking with some difficulty, “I hope you will be able to carry out all your plans for yourself and Stella; but while you’re making the money, she will have to make the friends.  Don’t you ever interfere with her doing it.  From what little I have seen of the world, it’s going to take both to carry you through.”

His face flushed a little, but he recognized her faithfulness and did it honor.  “That is true, mother, and I will remember what you say.  But I have some friends,” he added, in enforced self-vindication, “in Vaucluse if not here.”

A whistle sounded up the road.  She caught his hand with a swift accession of tenderness towards his youth.  “You’ve done the best you could, Lindsay,” she said.  “I wish you well, my son, I wish you well.”  There were tears in her eyes.

George Morrow and the girl in red followed Stella into the car, not at all disconcerted at having to get off after the train was in motion.  “Don’t forget me, Stella,” the girl called back.  “Don’t you ever forget Ida Brand!”

There was a waving of hands and handkerchiefs from the little station, aglare in the early afternoon sun.  A few moments later the train had rounded a curve, shutting the meagre village from sight, and, to Lindsay Cowart’s thought, shutting it into a remote past as well.

He arose and began rearranging their luggage.  “Do you want these?” he inquired, holding up a bouquet of dahlias, scarlet sage, and purple petunias, and thinking of only one answer as possible.

“I will take them,” she said, as he stood waiting her formal consent to drop them from the car window.  Her voice was quite as usual, but something in her face suggested to him that this going away from her childhood’s home might be a different thing to her from what he had conceived it to be.  He caught the touch of tender vindication in her manner as she untied the cheap red ribbon which held the flowers together and rearranged them into two bunches so that the jarring colors might no longer offend, and felt that the really natural thing for her to do was to weep, and that she only restrained her tears for his sake.  Sixteen was so young!  His heart grew warm and brotherly towards her youth and inexperience; but, after all, how infinitely better that she should have cause for this passing sorrow.

He left her alone, but not for long.  He was eager to talk with her of the plans about which he had been writing her the two years since he himself had been a student at Vaucluse, of the future which they should achieve together.  It seemed to him only necessary for him to show her his point of view to have her adopt it as her own; and he believed, building on her buoyancy and responsiveness of disposition, that nothing he might propose would be beyond the scope of her courage.