d fifteen?"

"I do not know," said his mother, "and I am not going to talk about it.
My clothes and the girls' clothes will be all right for this year."

"Mother," said Larry, "I am not going to school this year. I am not
going to spend thirty-one dollars for clothes while you and the girls
spend nothing. I am going to work first, and then go to school. I am not
going to school this year." The boy rose from his chair and stood and
faced his mother with quivering lips, fighting to keep back the tears.

Mother reached out her hand and drew him toward her. "My darling boy,"
she said in a low voice, "I love to hear you, but listen to me. Are you
listening? You must be educated. Nothing must interfere with that.
No suffering is too great to be endured by all of us. The time for
education is youth; first because your mind works more quickly and
retains better what it acquires, and second because it is a better
investment, and you will sooner be able to pay us all back what we spend
now. So you will go to school this year, boy, if we can manage it, and
I think we can. Some day," she added, patting him on the shoulder, and
holding him off from her, "when you are rich you will give me a silk
dress."

"Won't I just," cried the boy passionately, "and the girls too, and
everything you want, and I will give you a good time yet, mother. You
deserve the best a woman ever had and I will give it to you."

The mother turned her face away from him and looked out of the window.
She saw not the fields of growing grain but a long vista of happy days
ever growing in beauty and in glory until she could see no more for the
tears that quietly fell. The boy dropped on his knees beside her.

"Oh, mother, mother," he said. "You have been wonderful to us all, and
you have had an awfully hard time. A fellow never knows, does he?"

"A hard time? A hard time?" said his mother, a great surprise in her
voice and in her face. "No, my boy, no hard time for me. A dear, dear,
lovely time with you all, every day, every day. Never do I want a better
time than I have had with you."

The event proved the wisdom of Mrs. Gwynne's determination to put little
faith in the optimistic confidence of her husband in regard to the
profits to be expected from the operations of the National Machine
Company. A year's business was sufficient to demonstrate that the
Mapleton branch of the National Machine Company was bankrupt. By
every law of life it ought to be bankru