They troubled him, shook him, made him want to
use his man-strength against something that was hurting her.
He did not know what it could be; he did not know that there
was anything--but oddly the memory of his mother's white face
back in the long ago, and of her tone when she said, "Oh,
God, please!" came back and fitted themselves to the look in
this woman's eyes.
Bud sat down on his canvas-wrapped bed and lifted his hat to
rumple his hair and then smooth it again, as was his habit
when worried. He looked at the cookie, and because he was
hungry he ate it with a foolish feeling that he was being
sentimental as the very devil, thinking how her hands had
touched it. He rolled and smoked a cigarette afterwards, and
wondered who she was and whether she was married, and what
her first name was.
A quiet smoke will bring a fellow to his senses sometimes
when nothing else will, and Bud managed, by smoking two
cigarettes in rapid succession, to restore himself to some
degree of sanity.
"Funny how she made me think of mother, back when I was a kid
coming up from Texas," he mused. "Mother'd like her." It was
the first time he had ever thought just that about a girl. "She's
no relation to Honey," he added. "I'd bet a horse on that." He
recalled how white and soft were Honey's hands, and he swore a
little.
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