The Lost Children

by Inez Haynes Irwin

 

THE LOST CHILDREN

BY INEZ HAYNES GILLMORE

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. GRAHAM COOTES

Mrs. Martin heard Phoebe's bedroom door slam with the force characteristic of that decided young person. Simultaneously her husband's chair scraped back from his late and lonely dinner. He was coming slowly through the dining-room. Phoebe was running swiftly down the two flights of stairs. They would meet in the lower hall. Mrs. Martin stopped her work and listened, anticipating amusement.

Down came Phoebe. On came Mr. Martin. Her husband slopped suddenly. Mrs. Martin knew, without seeing it, just the expression that came into his face. She heard the airy bravado of Phoebe's, "Well, father, how do you like it?"

But Mr. Martin said nothing. Came Phoebe's gay laughter sweeping like a banner through the silence; came the swift patter of her high heels as she danced toward the kitchen to show Julia her gown. Then Mrs. Martin heard her husband's step approaching.

"Well, I've lost my little girl, mother," he said from the doorway. A note of real distress quivered in his voice, and he gazed about the pleasant living-room as if that, too, had lost some of the sweetness of familiarity.

In deference to his feeling, Mrs. Martin tried to look sympathetic, but her mouth trembled slightly.

Mr. Martin sank into the Morris-chair by the big reading table. "I don't see why you had to put her in long skirts so soon," he grumbled; "she's only a child still."

A tiny smile, full of a staid, middle-aged mischief, flicked across Mrs. Martin's lips. "Why, don't you like it, Ed?" she said, drawing him out artfully. "I think she looks splendid." She pushed the big green-shaded lamp a little nearer to his side of the table, as if to call his attention to the evening paper lying there.

"Like it!" He made no move toward the paper—ordinarily he seized it with avidity. "Of course I don't like it," he protested. "Couldn't you have put it off a little longer?"

Mrs. Martin laughed outright. "Oh, Ed!" she exclaimed. "The fact is," she went on more seriously, "I've really held Phoebe back, because she was so small for her age. And the sailor suits that girls are wearing so much nowadays have kept her looking young. But this last year she's shot up so. My land, I never saw a girl grow the way she has! She's seventeen and over now, you must remember. It's time she was in long skirts. And then she's kept at me so! I guess you know as well as anybody how Phoeb' can tease."

She paused as if expecting a reply. He grunted an assent.

"Some girls hate to go into long skirts, but Phoebe has always been crazy to grow up. I'm tickled enough, she's that kind. She's always had a great eye for dress ever since she was a little girl. Oh, I was so glad when I found out she was going to be vain—well, not vain, perhaps, but particular."

"Vain will do," her husband said with a certain grimness.

"I wasn't vain enough. I never cared what I wore, but Phoeb' has always been the fussiest child. But I knew just how you'd feel about her first long dress. I warned her never to mention that princess to you until it was finished or she'd never get a chance to put it on her back."

"Do you mean to tell me. Bertha, that you want her to grow up?" Mr. Martin demanded.

"Of course I do." She dropped her sewing to shake her hands in the gesture which her family knew betokened rapturous delight. "Why, Ed, you just think what fun it's going to be for me." Mrs. Martin, with an innocent, wifely malice, was playing on his mood. "That's more than half the fun of having a daughter—watching her grow up and living all through it again with her."

"Of course you know what it means." Mr. Martin's tone was that of one who prophesies dire calamities. "She'll be going to balls next."

"Of course she will," Mrs. Martin agreed serenely. "I'm going to let her go to all the school dances this year if she's asked. Mrs. Minot and I are going together and look on from the balcony. Phoeb'll be asked easy enough. She's a real pretty girl, and a lovely dancer. The young men won't be long in finding that out."

Mr. Martin stared at her. "Every Tom, Dick and Harry will be calling on her."

"Of course they will."

"Let me catch one of them round here," Martin threatened in a stormy irritation. "She's too young for that sort of thing."

"You don't seem to mind Tug Warburton," Mrs. Martin suggested.

"Tug!" her husband repeated. "Tug!" he reiterated scathingly. "Why, Tug comes over here to see Ernest!" He glared at his wife. The mischievous smile still played about her lips. "You don't mean to tell me, mother—oh, pshaw!"

Mrs. Martin stopped her darning and looked at him.

He was a tall, big man, nearing fifty. He had been a shy, stammering boy when she married him. Raw-boned and lumbering, his appearance then gave no trace of the sterling ability which, at thirty-five, suddenly began to develop in him. Now he had the alert air of a man of affairs. But, save for his silvering hair, he looked as young as when she first saw him. Without aging, he had changed, however. His figure had filled out, and he was even handsome in a large-featured, leonine way. He had not noticed the change, although she had watched it with the pride of possession. It had never occurred to her to tell him of it, though.

She, on the contrary, was much older than the girl to whom he had become engaged at the outset of his college career. Then she was just in the bud of her fragile, blonde beauty. Now she looked his elder by at least ten years. She was thin and meager. She had false teeth and she wore spectacles. But behind the round thick lenses of her glasses her eyes were soft. Hints of the delicate coloring of her youth lingered in her complexion. And her hair, which she always wore parted in the middle and trained tn frizzed bunches over her ears, accented the daguerreotype sweetness of her face. She was one of those women who always wear a shawl in the house. But under its transparent folds her shirt-waist, fitting trimly over her still pretty, sloping shoulders, gave her a curious effect of a faded, belated girlishness.

She had never been his intellectual equal, although he did not realize this. He knew only that she had taken spiritual heights that he could not achieve; his love for her had never lost its youthful quality of veneration.

"Why, you really do care, father," she said in wonder.

"Care? Of course I care! Didn't I tell you I'd lost my little girl? I feel as if she were dead. Then beside——" He stopped short, for Phoebe stood in the doorway. But it was too late. She had caught his words.

"Oh, bother you, dad! What a trial you are to me!" Phoebe scolded.

She was a tall, slim girl; she had her father's features, softened to a piquant femininity, and her mother's charming coloring, become, in the second generation, a little more vivid and permanent. Her lips were brilliant. Her gray eyes were as limpid as tiny lakes. The cream of her skin, reinforced by some shadowing admixture, seemed almost dusky. She had a spirited look, but as yet the soul of the girl had not begun to shine through these lustrous surfaces.

The offending gown was a princess dress of a delicate, pale-yellow crêpe with insertions of lace. It did its soft full best to fulfil the charming promises of her immature figure. It came quite to her toes. That trait for which her mother professed to be so grateful—her interest in her personal appearance—showed itself in the care in which her hair, a turbulent, brown-gold mass, was trained to follow the contours of her little head, in the perkiness of the bows on her shoes, in the trim adjustment of the ribbon and lace at her neck.

She swept her father a series of curtsies, very low. She perched herself on the arm of his chair and began ruffling his hair until it stood out in all directions from his head; she smoothed it down again with one of her side-combs. He submitted meekly.

"What a goose you are, dad," she continued airily. "I suppose you'd be perfectly content to have me in short clothes until I was an old maid of twenty-five and people stared at me in the streets."

"I don't like to see a child forced into womanhood," her father retorted, trying hard not to be mollified.

"Well, it's lucky for me, dad, you haven't a word to say about anything that goes on in this house," she said, with the frank impertinence that was one of her great charms for him, "not—a—word—to—say—about—anything—that—goes—on—in—this—house," she repeated tenderly, kissing him on the end of the nose with every word. "When I get married, daddy, I'm going to keep my husband under my thumb just the way mother has kept you."

He laughed at this in spite of himself.

"But I suppose you probably won't ever let me get married," she went on.

She jumped from his chair and danced about the room. His eyes, still holding the lees of discontent, followed every move of her buoyant figure.

"I suppose if I did get engaged to be married you wouldn't let me wear my wedding dress because I hadn't grown up. I'd be married in a Peter Thompson suit if you had your way." At this picture she bubbled over with laughter. "I'd either have to wear a Peter Thompson or elope. That's what a father like you does—you drive a girl to eloping. Oh, father"—she interrupted herself suddenly with true feminine inconsequence—"the game this afternoon was great. There's a little junior at guard—Molly Tate—and she's a corker—dandy, I mean," she corrected herself under his reproving eye. "If we play Tyndal Hall next week, couldn't you come over with me? I want you to see——"

Mrs. Martin, smiling a little to herself, went on darning. She was thinking how doggedly her husband had fought every maturing change that she had made in Phoebe's attire Even when she was a baby he had resented her first short clothes. And from that time on he had examined every new thing she bought the little girl. He always had convictions about her hats, her boots, the way her hair was done. Phoebe was almost four before Mrs. Martin could persuade him to let her have the child's long curls cut. He protested against each of the subsequent cuttings which Mrs. Martin insisted were necessary to strengthen and thicken it. The truth of the matter was that he did not like anything that made her look boyish or mature. It was the little girl in her that he adored, and after each new metamorphosis he was unhappy until he rediscovered that little girl again.

He had been quite different with Ernest, their son. He wanted to make a man of Ernest as soon as he could, Mrs. Martin reflected, with the surge of an old resentment. He never liked the little dresses she made for him, and Ernest had gone into trousers at three, skipping entirely the kilt epoch, upon which Mrs. Martin was depending to prolong his boyhood. When Ernest was three, without consulting her at all, Mr. Martin had the child's soft golden curls hacked off in what he called a "fighting cut." Again Mrs. Martin throbbed reminiscently with a sense of that injury. Up-stairs in her top bureau drawer still lay those curls. Mr. Martin had had presence of mind to bring them placatingly home from the barber's.

Phoebe was twisting before the mirror, one admiring eye on the unbroken line of the back of her princess gown; also she was talking. "Tug Warburton translated Timneo Danaos el dona ferentes, 'I fear the Greeks and their gifts something fierce.' You ought to have heard Mr. Ballington laugh. He said when he was at college somebody translated it 'I fear the Greeks and their fierce gifts,' but Tug held the record up to date.

"Oh, and, father, Mr. Ballington brought an edition of Plutarch to school to-day that he bought in Rome last summer, and let us all look at it. Printed in 1516, bound in parchment, and all marked up with the comments of some old bughouse—funny old scholar, I mean. Oh, it was perfectly lovely! I was just crazy about it."

Mrs. Martin was listening, but she did not interrupt. She had become accustomed to playing the silent auditor to Phoebe's long daily talks with her father. It was one of their family jokes that Phoebe was the apple of his eye and that her distinguished looking father was Phoebe's supreme family pride. Mrs. Martin took a great deal of delight in the friendship that supplemented their natural devotion. Sometimes she herself felt a little awe of the daughter who chattered so nimbly about Latin and Greek, was glad that Mr. Martin at least could meet Phoebe on an equal intellectual footing. Although she had never formulated it to herself, she knew this absorbed devotion to the girl-fruit of their union was the highest tribute he could pay her, his wife. He liked to indulge Phoebe as he had never been able to indulge her mother. The gold locket, for instance, which Phoebe was wearing at that moment. She knew that when he gave these things to Phoebe he was really giving them to her; he was trying to make up for the lean years when she had toiled and economized for him.

And when he was extravagant for Phoebe it was always at his own expense. Nothing, Mrs. Martin knew, could induce him to break into the monthly sum that he was putting away for Ernie's college education. Mr. Martin could no more have borrowed from this fund—Ernest's inherent right as the son of a Harvard man—than Mrs. Martin, to make presentable the ever-shabby Ernest, could have pilfered from the generous dress allowance which was Phoebe's' inherent right as an American girl.

"Here's Ern," Phoebe broke into these meditations suddenly; "I wonder what he'll say about my dress. Some knock, all right. Ern!" The door closed, but there was no footstep in their direction. "Ern! come in here!" she called again.

From where she sat Mrs. Martin could see her son reflected in the long hall mirror. From force of habit she watched him through the process of taking off his coat. He hung it up; paused for a moment as if in deep thought. Then, after a furtive, irresolute look about, he put his hand into a side pocket and brought out two or three small bundles. It was then precisely that Phoebe's peremptory "Ern!" rang out.

Ernest started as if it had been a bullet. Turning quickly, he thrust the bundles back into his coat pocket. Then he shambled into the living-room, tripping over the rug at the door.

Taller and bigger than Phoebe, though he was fifteen and she seventeen, Ernest was downy-cheeked and broad-shouldered, all nose, hands, and feet. In society his gray eyes always sulked. This was the only defense he had against the world. When he walked, especially if he fancied himself under observation, his arms and legs flew at all kinds of angles from his body. His voice broke at unexpected intervals.

When Phoebe looked at him she saw him exactly as he was—a gawky youth, his hands rough and dirty, his hair bristling, his clothes perpetually shabby.

When Mr. Martin looked at him he saw him exactly as he was—just boy, with the makings of a fine, athletic physique in his big, bulky body.

When Mrs. Martin looked at him she never saw him as he was. Sometimes she saw the cherubic, curly-headed baby of a dozen years ago, sometimes the stalwart, handsome, clear-cut youth of a few years ahead.

He advanced to the doorway and stood there, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

"What d'yer want, Phoeb'?" he asked huskily.

"What do you think of my new dress?" his sister demanded, for his expression showed no change.

"Oh, all right, I guess." Then, with true masculine conservatism: "Say, but your hair looks fierce that new way."

"Oh, of course," Phoebe returned, taking fire over the criticism she had invited. "You always hate any new way I do my hair, Ern Martin. Nothing I wear ever pleases you."

This was not at all true. Ernest was, in fact, exceedingly proud of his pretty sister, She was two grades ahead of him in High School, president and social arbitress of her class. It was openly asserted that she would be valedictorian. Ernest knew she was much admired by the boys. He realized that he held a certain standing among the seniors simply because he was Phoeb' Martin's brother. And aside from his admiration of the quality of leadership in her, he really thought her a pretty girl. More than once he had steered his "gang" a block out of the way for the secret purpose of intercepting her and showing her off to his friends. A deep, shy satisfaction came over him at the admiring silence which fell upon these lower classmen as they approached her, at the punctiliousness of their salutes. But, to make up to him for this weakness, his "Hullo, Phoeb'!" and his poke at his visor cap were carefully perfunctory.

Phoebe complained of this to her mother. "You tell Ernest, mother, that he is to take his hat entirely off his head when he meets me on the street or I sha'n't recognize him," she had threatened loftily.

This, transmitted to Ernest, elicited something unintelligible in defense and defiance. He would have died rather than confess, even to his mother, how much he admired his sister.

So at this moment Ernest thought her very pretty; but his ethics of boyhood forbade him to tell her so.

"What you would like me to do," Phoebe concluded, "is to wear it wound around my head like Molly Tate."

Ernest stiffened. "Aw, cut it out! I dunno how Molly Tate wears her hair," he returned hotly.

"Oh, no; of course you don't!" Phoebe jeered. "Carrying her books to school for her every day and——"

"I don't, neither," Ernest contradicted. "I guess I've got something better to do than to be carryin' books for a lot of girls. I jes happened to be passing her house that morning, and she had such a lot of books she asked me to help her. I guess you needn't talk. Everybody's on to Tug Warburton hanging around the corner every morning for a half hour to carry your books."

"Toland is very kind about carrying everybody's books," Phoebe said in her most grown-up manner a manner whose labored loftiness and condescending sweetness she knew always infuriated her brother. "He not only carries my books for me, but occasionally he carries them for Molly. He is always to be relied on. He never loses them on the way, and as he washes his hands occasionally he returns them in the same condition in which he receives them."

This was the retort sisterly and four-pronged. Her "Toland" rebuked him for the use of the nickname that Toland's mother was vainly beseeching that engaging scapegrace to live down. Any allusion on her part to "clean hands" always provoked a battle. Also, Ernest had lost one of Molly Tate's books and dropped one of his sister's in the mud.

To defend himself against this series of stings was like beating off a swarm of bees. Ernest shifted the attack to Toland. "Well, I'm glad I'm not like that sissy," he retorted, casting the foulest aspersion he knew.

"Stop this quarreling, children," interrupted Mrs. Martin. It came over her that Mr. Martin might send Ernie to his room if the discussion went any further. "It does seem to me, Phoebe, that you pick on Ernie an awful lot."

"Well, I guess if I didn't call him down once in a while there'd be no living with him. You think he's perfect, mother Martin." Phoebe, without waiting for a reply, ran out of the room and up-stairs.

Mrs. Martin reflected irritably that she was always the buffer in their microscopic family rows. She was eternally peace-making between Phoebe and her father, between Ernie and Phoebe, between Ernie and his father. If there was one thing she could criticize in Edward Martin it was his treatment of Ernie. Indulgent as he was to Phoebe, he kept a sharp and minatory eye on his son. Whenever he had any criticism to make of his daughter's conduct it was conveyed to her, properly softened, through his wife. But with Ernie he came straight out in unchastened language. Mrs. Martin was forever trying to anticipate his complaints, forever putting Ernest on his guard. It was always a surprise to Mrs. Martin when she came upon Ernest's underlying admiration for his father.

In the past Ernest had come to her whenever he wanted something from his father. Now—she remarked it with no sense of rancor, more with another prideful recognition of the bond between father and daughter—Ernie always went to his sister. And Phoebe, although she used the opportunity to drive bargains with her brother, invariably did her best.

At least, Mrs. Martin reflected gratefully, Phoebe and she never had to have any go-betweens. That was the joy of having a daughter. You always knew what a daughter was doing and thinking. Now a son——

That little scene in the hall was the first overt evidence that something was wrong with Ernie. There had been something wrong for three days. She knew it absolutely, although wild horses would not have drawn the admission from her so long as what was verity in her mind could be only suspicion in another's. Something was wrong—she did not know what. Something was wrong—how she knew it she could not have told. With just the same impalpable organs of perception she had foreseen their troubles and feelings when they were babies—known long before anyone else noticed it when they were going to be sick.

If it had been Phoebe, her instincts would have told her all about it long before this. Phoebe was a girl creature—her daughter—part of herself. There had never been any need of explanations between them. She read Phoebe's mind as she read her own face in a mirror. But Ernie was alien. There lay between them a barrier—a barrier as delicate and intangible as mist or fog, a barrier strong as adamant—the insuperable barrier of sex. She could not know things about Ernie. She could only sense them. Some day, she told herself, she could not know so much of Ernie's life as she knew now, when she must guess, conjecture, surmise. That time must come. It was right that it should come, she assured herself fiercely.

Had it come?

It might be, this impalpable change of the last few days, only a sense of guilt. Boys of his age, she knew as well as anyone else, often committed minor peccadillos as impossible to the simplicities of an earlier age as to the maturity of a later one. She had seen him through much. She had cured him of lying and swearing, although she had been at her wits' ends to devise punishments for these crimes. At fourteen he had smoked his first cigar; she had not needed to punish him for that: Nature, to his father's grim delight, had taken the responsibility from her. He had not always been docile. There was the dreadful summer when be had gone in swimming repeatedly and against her orders. This was one of her absolute defeats; for he became so proficient in the end that his father had prevailed on her to repeat a law which was dead-letter from its inception. There was the next summer, even more dreadful, when he had learned how to sail a boat. She spent that summer on the back porch of their seaside cottage because it did not command a view of the water.

Like all boys, he had broken windows playing baseball; he had robbed orchards. Once, soon after he entered High School, the principal, Mr. Ballington, visited upon Ernest the supreme disgrace of sending for his mother. It appeared that her boy had been organizing pitched battles between his class and the one above it. Yes, Ernie had done the things that all boys do; but he had never done anything mean. His crimes had been honorable, the inevitable outcome of his hard young health and his boyish mischief.

What could it be now?

Ernest had been trimming a hanging piece of leather from the sole of his boot. He finished, hurled the trimmings (miraculously) into a waste-basket, and his voice broke into his mother's meditations.

"I'm going over to Tom's to-night, mother; Father won't kick, will he, if I stay a little late?"

"No," answered Mrs. Martin. "Be sure you don't let the cat out when you come in." Her voice and manner were tranquil; but when he hurried out of the room she watched his reflection in the mirror. He went straight to the bulging pocket of his coat. She saw him fumble an instant. Then, concealing his bundles with his hands flat against his chest, he dashed up-stairs to his room. In another moment he came running down, dove into his coat, and raced out into the street.

What had he taken up to his room? Mrs. Martin's heart beat fast. She had an impulse to turn to her husband and confide in him. But, obeying that instinct which compels mothers to shield their boy young as long as possible, she checked it.

Phoebe, the sweetest of girlish visions, came floating down the stairs. Over her princess gown she wore a long blue evening cape, on her soft hair a big, frilly blue scarf.

Mrs. Martin kissed her mechanically. Mechanically Mrs. Martin watched her link her arm in her father's and trip down the street, talking busily. But she did not see either of them. Even after they had turned the corner she stood for a moment staring abstractedly after them. Then a blinding terror sent her scurrying to Ernest's room.

It was a big, square chamber. It was filled with the litter that accumulates out of the successive collecting manias of a growing boy. The big black-walnut book-case, long ago rejected from the living-room, was filled with minerals and shells laboriously labeled, with birds' nests and birds' eggs, with stamp albums and picture postal cards. His trunk, his tool chest and his closet all ran over. Mrs. Martin stood looking about her with the air of one who has never seen the place before.

The idea came to her to make a thorough search of his things. But even as she moved toward the bureau something held her back. She struggled with herself. She repeated to herself over and over that she, Ernie's mother, had the right to see anything that was his. But the something still held her back. It was as though the ghost of Ernie's manhood stood on guard there. It came to her that her right had gone. Suddenly she turned and walked out of the room.

Mr. Martin was just coming in. "Well, I have lost my little girl," he remarked again, But this time his despair was comic. "What do you think she told me? She said I needn't come after her to-night. Tug Warburton is going to bring her home."

 

It was after eleven when Ernest came home. Phoebe, returning promptly at eleven, had gone to bed and to sleep long ago. Mr. Martin, secure in his wife's statement that she had told Ernest he could stay out later than usual, was sleeping tranquilly. Mrs. Martin lay quiet, but tense and wide-eyed, listening. It seemed as though Ernest would never come.

At last she heard steps coming up the asphalt walk, steps creaking stealthily over the piazza, steps tiptoeing into the house. Some of her tension relaxed, but she listened as breathlessly as ever.

Mrs. Martin could never sleep so long as any member of the family was out. Dozens of times she had lain just so, waiting for Ernie. Now as always she visualized his actions.

The steps she heard next were taking him into the hall closet. In the pause which succeeded he was hanging up his coat and hat. Now he was going into the kitchen. She could hear him moving ponderously about there, making efforts, boyishly awkward, to muffle his noise. Now be was getting out the molasses jug. Now he was cutting the half-dozen thick slices of bread that would reduce one of Julia's creamy loaves to a heel. For the first time she failed to smile at his childish love of bread and molasses. Then came another pause.

She listened.

He was not sitting down to his bread and molasses; he was moving about. She could hear him jingling about the gas stove. Could it be possible that he was cooking something? No, that was not probable. Ernie had never cooked anything in his life. Besides, there were cookies, pie, cake, any number of things for him to eat if he was unusually hungry. No, something mysterious was going on down there. She pictured him bending over the stove, a slice of bread, dribbling molasses, in his hand. What could he be doing? Another moment and she heard him filling the tea-kettle. He was heating water. What on earth——

Could it be that he felt ill? But her instinct rejected this; told her that, whatever he might be doing, it was connected with the mystery of the last two or three days. Now was her chance to find out. Involuntarily she sat straight up in bed. Should she go down there and confront him? Something held her back. Something compelled her to wait.

A long time went by.

Then she heard him come, quietly for him, out of the kitchen and up the stairs. He came with care and caution. She continued to visualize the scene. She sat up, her hand to her forehead, and it seemed to her that her soul walked with him. That extra sense in mothers flashed the truth to her. He was carrying something which had to be managed with skill and delicacy. Should she get up and meet him?

Something held her back. Something compelled her to wait.

She heard him fumble at the door of his room. She heard the door open. She heard it shut.

And then, quite suddenly, the thing which had been holding her back fettered her no longer. So quietly that she made no sound, she rose and slipped into her bed slippers. Her door was open. Still soundless, she crept down the hall to Ernie's room.

It occurred to her that this was the most awful moment she had known since her mother died. What might come of it? She dared not speculate on that, for she must go on. Every instant a fresh impulse held her back. Every instant a stronger one hurried her forward.

Noiselessly she knelt in front of Ernest's door and looked through the keyhole.

At the farther end of the room, his back to her, was Ernest standing before a hand mirror that dangled from the flaring gaslight.

He was shaving.

 

Mrs. Martin never knew what happened immediately afterward. But presently she found herself clinging to the doorway of her chamber. Mr. Martin was bending over her.

"What's the matter, Bertha?" he asked in alarm.

"Oh, Edward," she wailed, "I can't bear it—I can't bear it! Now I understand how you felt about Phoebe. I've lost my little boy. I've lost Ernie."

"Lost Ernie, mother! What do you mean?"

"He's shaving," Mrs. Martin sobbed.

If Mr. Martin's man sense of humor showed him that the situation was comic, he concealed it immediately.

"Don't cry any more, mother," he begged, patting her gently on the shoulder. "You've not lost him—he's only changed. It's all right."

"Oh, I know it's all right," Mrs. Martin said, clinging to him. "Of course it's all right. But, oh, I'm glad of one thing. You don't change."