arantined
dogs, entered the kennels.

His mother, in smock and apron, and wearing rubber gloves, was seated
on the edge of a straw-littered bunk, a bottle in one hand, a
medicine-dropper in the other. Her four-footed patient, swathed in
blankets, lay on the straw beside her.

"Well, dear," she said, looking up at her son, "where have you been
all night, and most of to-day?"

"I'll tell you about it later, mother. There's something else I want
to ask you----" He fell silent, watching her measure out fourteen
drops of Grover's Specific for distemper.

"I'm listening, Garry," she said, bending over the sick pup and gently
forcing open his feverish jaws. Then she dropped her medicine far back
on his tongue; the pup gulped, sneezed, looked at her out of dull eyes
and feebly wagged his tail.

"I'm going to pull him through, Garry," she said. "The other pups are
doing well, too. But your sister and I were up with them all night. I
only hope and pray that the distemper doesn't spread."

She looked up at her son:

"Well, dear, what is it you have to ask me?"

"Mother, do you like Dulcie Soane?"

"I scarcely know her yet.... She's very sweet--very young----"

"Do you like her?"

"Why--yes----" She looked intently at her tall, unsmiling son. "But I
don't even know who she is, Garry."

Her son bent down beside her and put one arm around her shoulder. She
sat quite motionless with the bottle of Grover's Specific in one
rubber-gloved hand, the medicine dropper poised in the other.

He said:

"Dulcie's name is Fane, not Soane. Her grandfather was Sir Barry
Fane, of Fane Court--an Irishman. His daughter, Eileen, was Dulcie's
mother.... Her father--is dead--I believe."

"But--this explains nothing, Garry."

"Is it not explanation enough, mother?"

"Is it enough for you, my son?"

"Yes."

Her head slowly drooped. She sat gazing in silence at the straw-littered
floor.

He looked earnestly, anxiously at his mother's face. Her brooding
expression remained tranquil but inscrutable.

He said, watching her intently:

"I wasn't sure about myself until last night. I don't know about
Dulcie, whether she can care for me--in this new way.... We were
friends. But I am in love with her now.... Deeply."

It was one of the moments in his career which remain fixed forever in
a young man's memory.

In a mother's memory, too. Whatever she says and does then, he never
forgets. She, too, remembers always.

He stood leanin