"No," said Elliott. "Indeed I don't." She had what she had been angling for, in good measure, but she rather wished she hadn't got it, after all. "Haven't you had any clue in all these years as to who your people were?"
"Not the slightest. I'm willing to let things rest as they are."
"Yes, of course," thought Elliott, "but--" She let it go at "but." Oughtn't somebody, as Stannard said, to have warned her? These boys' people might have been very common persons, not at all like Camerons. The fact that no relatives appeared proved that, didn't it? Every one who was any one at all had a family. Bruce did not look common: his gray eyes and his broad forehead and his keen, thin face were almost distinguished, and his manners were above criticism. But one never could tell. And hadn't he been brought up by Camerons? The very openness with which he had told his story had something fine about it. He, like Laura, seemed to see nothing in it to conceal.
Well, was there? Elliott could quite clearly imagine what Aunt Margaret, Stannard's mother, would say to that question. She had never especially cared for Aunt Margaret. As Elliott looked at Bruce Fearing, one of the pillars of her familiar world began to totter. Actually, she could think of no particularly good reason why, when she had heard his story, she should proceed to shun him. His history simply didn't seem to matter, except to make her sorry for him; and yet she couldn't be really sorry for a boy who had been brought up by Aunt Jessica.
Perhaps the Cameron Farm atmosphere was already beginning to work.
"I think you and your brother had luck," she said.
Elliott turned the conversation. "I wish you could tell me what you were going to say, when we were interrupted yesterday, about a person's having no choice except how he will do things--_you_ having had only that kind of choice."
"I remember," said Bruce. "Well, for one thing, I suppose I could get grouchy, if I chose, over not knowing who my people were."
"They may have been very splendid," said Elliott.
"In that case," she countered, "you have the satisfaction of _not_ knowing who they were."
"Exactly. But that's rather a crawl, isn't it? Of course, a fellow would like to know."