A couple of days after this, during which he had failed to profit by so free a permission, he had been for a quarter of an hour walking with his charge in silence when the boy became sociable¹ again with the remark: “I’ll tell you how I know it; I know it through Zenobie.”

“Zenobie? Who in the world is she?”

“A nurse I used to have — ever so many years ago. A charming woman. I liked her awfully², and she liked me.”

“There’s no accounting³ for tastes. What is it you know through her?”

“Why what their idea is. She went away because they didn’t fork out. She did like me awfully, and she stayed two years. She told me all about it — that at last she could never get her wages. As soon as they saw how much she liked me they stopped giving her anything. They thought she’d stay for nothing — just because, don’t you know?” And Morgan had a queer little conscious lucid⁴ look. “She did stay ever so long — as long an she could. She was only a poor girl. She used to send money to her mother. At last she couldn’t afford it any longer, and went away in a fearful rage one night — I mean of course in a rage against them. She cried over me tremendously, she hugged me nearly to death. She told me all about it,” the boy repeated. “She told me it was their idea. So I guessed, ever so long ago, that they have had the same idea with you.”

“Zenobie was very sharp,” said Pemberton. “And she made you so.”

“Oh that wasn’t Zenobie; that was nature. And experience!” Morgan laughed.

“Well, Zenobie was a part of your experience.”

“Certainly I was a part of hers, poor dear!” the boy wisely sighed. “And I’m part of yours.”

“A very important part. But I don’t see how you know that I’ve been treated like Zenobie.”

“Do you take me for the biggest dunce you’ve known?” Morgan asked. “Haven’t I been conscious of what we’ve been through together?”

“What we’ve been through?”

“Our privations — our dark days.”

“Oh our days have been bright enough.”

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