He took her hand and kissed it repeatedly, as if impressing upon her the one important fact back of all hypothesis and perilous efforts at statement.
"You must give me time," he said. "It takes courage in these days for a good American to tell the girl he loves that his father was a hired man."
He smiled, but there was little mirth and less color in his face.
"What absurdity!" cried Moya. Then glancing at him she added quickly, "_My_ father is a hired man. Most fathers who are worth anything are!"
"My father was because he came of that class. His father was one before him. His mother took in tailoring in the village where he was born. He had only the commonest common-school education and not much of that. At eleven he worked for his board and clothes at my Grandfather Van Elten's, and from that time he earned his bread with his hands. Don't imagine that I'm apologizing," Paul went on rapidly. "The apology belongs on the other side. In New York, for instance, the Bogardus blood is quite as good as the Bevier or the Broderick or the Van Elten; but up the Hudson, owing to those chances or mischances that selected our farming aristocracy for us, my father's people had slipped out of their holdings and sunk to the poor artisan class which the old Dutch landowners held in contempt."
"We are not landowners," said Moya. "What does it matter? What does any of it matter?"
"It matters to be honest and not sail under false colors. I thought you would not speak of the Poor Man as you do if you knew that I am his son."
"Money has nothing to do with position in the army. I am a poor man's daughter."
"Ah, child! Your father gives orders--mine took them, all his life."
"My father has to take what he gives. There is no escaping 'orders.' Even I know that!" said Moya. A slight shiver passed over her as she spoke, laughing off as usual the touch of seriousness in her words.
"Why did you do that?" Paul touched her shoulder. "Is it the wind? There is a wind creeping down these steps." He improved the formation slightly in respect to the wind.
"Listen!" said Moya. "Isn't that your mother walking on the porch? Father, I know, is writing. She will be lonely."
"She is never lonely, more or less. It is always the same loneliness--of a woman widowed for years."