as you know, if even hypnotism is mentioned. I did tell him about Archie's intuition in that guessing game, and, as you again know, he asked you not to play it any more, though at the same time he insisted that it was a mere guess on Archie's part."
Cathie was silent a moment.
"And those scribbles of Archie's?" she asked. "Do they not make it more difficult for you to tell him about Martin now? A sensitive boy like that might get it into his head that his dead brother was writing to him."
"Certainly I don't want Archie to think that," said his mother. "No, I shall put off telling him now."
"And if he asks?" said Miss Bampton.
"I have an idea that he won't ask."
She got up and moved about the room for a moment in silence.
"My dear, all children have got a secret life of their own," she said, "and, oh, how their mothers want to be admitted! But every young thing has a walled-up place in his heart, to which he admits nobody, and, if you ask to be admitted, not only is the door shut, but locked. We all had our secret places, and I make a guess that this bit of paper—by the way, mind you put it back in the school-room where Archie left it—lives in Archie's secret place. How I long to get in, the darling! But all I can do is to wait outside, and take what he gives me. Archie doesn't tell me everything, why should he? He didn't tell me what it was that made him put the burning coals out of the fire on to my hearthrug."
"Probably he didn't know."
"Something inside him knew, or else he wouldn't have done it. All we do is accountable for by what is inside us. Impulses come from within."
"But they are suggested by what is without," said Miss Bampton.
